Rumeli Hisari

I opened my curtains on Tuesday morning to warmth and blue and felt an immediate compulsion to be outdoors. After several attempts to decipher the rapid Turkish and wild gesticulations of various bus drivers, I finally worked out which bus I needed to be on to take me to Istanbul's vast and ancient fortress, Rumeli Hisari. It took me all the way along the coastal road, past some very exclusive looking cafes and what can only be described as a 'quaint' little harbour which displayed a collection of wooden boats of varying degrees of luxury arranged neatly alongside eachother.

When the time came for me to get off, all my fellow passengers who had heard me explaining in broken Turkish where I was trying to get to started tapping me on the shoulder and enthusiastically indicating that this was the place. I hopped off the bus and peered up at the pale stone edifice of gargantuan propotions. Sturdy is the word.

Being an off-season weekday, I had the place practically to myself. I spent about an hour wandering around the stone walls, clambering up every set of perilously narrow cobbled steps, some of which were perhaps only two feet wide with a 20 foot drop to one side. Of course, due to the delicious disregard of health and safety, there was not a railing in sight

I climbed up to the highest point of the fortress and there I wedged myself between the battlements and spent a happy half-hour sitting there lost in thought, overlooking the beautiful Bosphorus that was gleaming as the sunlight danced about upon it's surface.