oh, Istanbul

What a day!  Chaperoned, with three colleagues, a group of 45 residential students for a Bosphorus boat trip on this HOT sunny day - yup, this extraordinary summer-like weather continues....  Took loads of photos of the kids, plus of course a few views of the shoreline - seen so many times but I never tire of looking at it - including this view of Ortakoy Mosque on the waterfront, with Etiler in the in the distance - so quintessentially "Istanbul" - a chaotic patchwork of old and new, traditional and modern, bordered by the beautiful Blue of the Bosphorus, especially on a day like this.

After the boat trip, and lunch with Melissa in an Otakoy cafe with very slow service - won't go there again -  I (we) went to FotoIstanbul exhibiton at the old Ortakoy orphanage (see here) for another look and once again I was mesmerised by the building and the people and took many more photos of them than the exhibited works!! Today being the penultimate day of the exhibition and weekend n'all, the place was over run with photographers - amateur and professional - some even had models with them to pose in the same window that I used here , an obvious choice with brilliant sunshine flooding the room and creating some powerful shadows (see extra).

Spent most of the evening looking at all the photos.  Tough choice for a 'pic(k) of the day' - but, well,  the Bosphorus and shoreline views on a stunningly bright sunshiny day always take the prize, and are a constant reminder of why I live in this city ....