Afternoon in the Park

Assembled from two different afternoons, in the park between Aya Sophia and the Blue Mosque.

Getting There
The walk up the hill to the park.

elaboratelt tiled wall in front of public W.C.

Akbiyik - the "restaurant street"
Tuvalet at the tourist bazaar under the Blue Mosque
An upscale hotel.

Being There

Old shoeshine guy on bench at crossing of paths

I saw this old shoeshine guy waiting at the top of my path, and discreetly cut across the lawn to avoid being hardsold. So help me he moved to intercept me. Mind you I could only hobble slowly on my infected swollen foot. I shifted direction again, and this mother moved again to cut me off, like a cutting horse homing in on a calf. When he started his pitch I ignored him and hobbled on past.

The old pigeon man wasn't hassling anybody. His universe was himself and the birds. It was like watching a jazz musician in a really high solo.

Young woman posing hard for companion woman's camera

Lilies of the field, some of them daffodils.

I would love to know what this sign says in its arabic-looking scrip, posted
at the Sultanahmet tram stop.

It looks a lot like the maze puzzles that were generated by a program my colleague Mark Zimmer wrote in 1978. Later, in the late 1980's a screensaver appeared using mazes generated by the same method.

Mark and I became friends when I wrote a program to read his program's mazes and solve them. The later screensaver did that part too, again using the same method (known as the Left Hand On The Wall Rule).

So help me, all three of these people by the fountain are posing to have their picture taken.