İstanbul in the snow; and the origin of the term House Work: Part 1, in which Our Hero has snow based fun in snowy İstanbul (did I mention the snow?)

Finally getting round to this posting. Which will be more than usually tedious, focussing as it does on snow, which probably y'all are heartily sick of having had your own fair share in UK anyway. So I have chopped it in two, to manage the pain/prolong the agony.

Mid January İstanbul and Turkey got hit by a proper cold spell. I was in central town a couple of weeks ago when the big snow started. We'd been invited by our landlady to stay over for the weekend, which would be a nice change from the domesticity of t'island, which had been getting a) old b) cold.

Landlady's flat was bonkers - she's got this penthouse like apartment right in the centre of town, two minutes from everywhere and a view over the whole city - I reckon sort of equal levels of desirability as a park lane place, but with sea and mosques instead of ringroad and manky Hyde Park. (Is it just me or is Hyde Park just not that attractive?) View from the window on the Friday night as follows.



Anyway, on the Saturday the snow started. Rather rocking timing then that we were in a nice centrally heated flat bang centre in the middle of town for wandering about and being enchanted in.

İstanbul was, more than usual, m-m-m-magical!



Above being Galata tower in the snow...



...bottom of the same.



...icicles on the, erm, something or other. (By the way, I'm a lousy tourist.)



...and the obligitory snow-on-mosque shot.

Anyway, it was all very nice and had a lovely weekend wandering about, gawping. By Monday had had enough of a good thing, and decided to go home. Colder weather was forecast and our landlady was fairly strongly urging us to stay, but we thought 'ah sod it, how bad can it be?'

TUNE IN FOR THE NEXT GRIPPING INSTALMENT TO FIND OUT JUST HOW BAD!!!