lili has this thing for breakfast, and I have this thing
against breakfast, and usually she gets what she wants, but
once in a while I prevail, which usually has disastrous
results. This time she agreed that breakfast yesterday
morning hadn't been all that interesting, and today I could
have my way for a change. So we lolled around in the sitting
room reading the newspaper and marvelling at how a big jet
airliner full of people could have gone missing just like
that. At some point the weather sort of cleared up, so it
behooved us to go out and enjoy it.

Alsancak in the daylight thrilled me even less than it had
at night. Of course, shopping in general doesn't. It has
been brought to my attention that lili pretty consistently
defers to me by refraining from spending much time in stores
(except food stores, which she enjoys as well as I but
generally refrains from eating anything that can be bought
there). This trip she had a bee in her bonnet about Turkish
towels. We'd poked about a few places in the past couple
days, and it seemed certain that we'd find some here. We
didn't, which didn't put her off much, I'm glad to say.

But presently, towards noontime, fatigue and other disasters
struck, and someone needed to sit down. Now. Luckily, there
was a luncheon and coffee place, Zeytinyagli, just up the
block, so.

You go to the back, which is a tavola calda arrangement, and
I was interested, until my unacute eyesight and acute sense
of smell told me the bad news - this is a vegetarian, and
possibly even a vegan, place. Argh.

A coarse brown cake soaked in syrup, tasty and sweet and big
enough for two, and a pot of tea came to $3. This native
delicacy, which I would order again if I knew its name, did
not please lili, though, and she soon turned up her little
nose at it, so soon I had another pound of food in my tum.

I should have done this half a decade ago and might have if
I'd owned a camera, but a collection of photos of lili
strolling into a McDonald's in every city in the world might
have been a cute thing. There of course is a McDonald's in
Izmir: she went in; I didn't. Ask no questions.

After our fill of what struck me as another giant slightly
picturesque urban mall, we walked eastward, planning to
cut south intersecting the Culture Park. I guess we were a
little too enthusiastic and walked a couple blocks too far.
No problem, there was a sign for Basmane, and I could get my
bearings based on that, only it was pointed in the opposite
direction from where I thought it should. So we stopped
across from a little old Christian church (not the oldest in
the city, which is St. Polycarp's next door to the Ren but
not open to the public), and as we puzzled over the map, an
old retired professorish guy came up to us and asked in
impeccable English, the first we had heard, even from hotel
staff, whether we were lost, so we explained our problem. He
looked up with some surprise at the sign I pointed out and
allowed that one could get to Basmane by going in that
direction, but that wouldn't have been his choice. He said
something about maybe traffic patterns and pointed in almost
the direction we were going to try next. The Culture Park
was over there, he informed us. And walked us a block out of
his way to make sure the idiot tourists were headed in the
right direction. So we got there, it was a couple hundred
meters away, so we weren't totally off; looked wistfully at
the dry fountains (too early in the season, but there were
mooning couples sitting there, rambunctious families nearby,
and so on, as if the water had been dancing); marveled at
the parachute tower, which apparently until recently was
an attraction for the adventurous young and old alike; and
determined that the museum was closed for renovations. So
lengthily down the park to Love St. and back to the hotel.

I think also it was today we watched the Women's Day parade,
an event that was almost official looking, orderly and with
a brass band in uniform leading it, but also with a slightly
naughty and seditious aroma at the same time. In the
background you could hear people angrily shouting through
bullhorns, probably celebrating anti-Women's Day.

More drinks and snacks at the lobby bar. I'd hoped for the
same guy as previous, as I had tipped him only averagely;
instead we got a taciturn 30-something who was perfectly
adequate and sort of warmed up to us only when he decided
that we weren't going to walk out and stiff him with the
bill. Of course we wouldn't - this was the club lounge,
and everything was free anyway, not that we'd ever try to
pull any such trick.

An Efes light was a mistake, pallid and tasteless compared
to the dark (though okay enough without that context), so
I switched to the other. lili had the same okay red wine.
More pistachios, refilled as before but with less alacrity.

I sort of felt for the guy, as if I were a bartender (not
being cut out for that kind of people work) I'd probably be
equally unbartenderly. I gave him an above-average tip.