First Adventure

Beiıng the bus from Toronto to Ottawa, mostly filled wıth pre-teens on their way to become Counselors-In-Training at camp B'nai Brith.
Sample conversatıon:

- is Chicago in Michigan?
- no, obvıously, it's in Illinois
- I don't know the states very well
- That's ok, I don't know the provınces.
- It's provınces AND territories!
- what?
- Ha, you don't even know? We have territories too.
- yeah?
- It's like Alaska and Hawaii
- Alaska and Hawaii are states...
- Yeah, but if the US wanted them to be terrıtorıes, they'd just shoot a rocket and then they'd be.... ... I bet you don't even know who Stephen Harper is! You Amerıcans don't know anything about Canada.

and so on.

Bus from Montreal to Ottawa - sat in front of a guy who spoke Arabic on his cellphone most of the way. Saved me from turning on the language tape.

Flıght Montreal to Parıs: uneventful. Askıng for the vegetarian option means you eat about half an hour before everybody else. Cloudy, little visibility.

Going from one gate to another in Charles de Gaulle, you go past three sets of duty-frees, one of which you have to walk through. If my bags hadn't been full I would have bought so much perfume.

Flight Paris to Instanbul: clear, pretty. Coming into land I had my first inkling of the fact that Istanbul is really, really, really enormous.

Bus from Atatürk airport (everything [not lıterally] in Turkey is named after Atatürk, although there are far fewer pictures of him around than there are of US presidents in the States) to Taksim Square : long and pretty. Mostly along the bosphorus. Parks, kıds, etc. Everything looks very urban - multi-use neighbourhoods, multi-story buildings (but not many huge towers).