stray dogs, cats and Galata Tower

Today we went on our own walking adventure, up and down hills, through Istanbul Beyoglu district, past the cafes and shops , down some curly narrow roads and up some too, and found the Galata tower. Built in 1348 -and called tower of christ - as a fire tower/watch tower, once a prison and now a museum with 360 degree views of Istanbul from top observation landing - truly beautiful to see from the outside as unfortunately closed today for renovation :(
We also visited the largest catholic church in Instanbul - St Anthony of Padua - we bought a candle and lit it with our prayers said for Trudy/Mum/grandma and melissa’s dear Dad Garry/poppy.
We sat with the stray dogs, kangal breed (mix large breed) which are everywhere laying about and very well behaved, together with the Instanbul cats which are in shops, walk ways and you can hear the kittens in bushes. It seems the locals, on the whole, look after the animals and consider it kind to care for them - steeped in Instanbul’s history. Look it up as it’s very interesting reading their history and current debates.
We walked down to the Golden Horn (natural inlet to the Bosphorus Türkiye) and sat watching the ferries and boats, train on the bridge above and locals finishing up at the nearby mosque call to prayers. We found a nice place back up the hills for coffee and well earned yummy blueberry cake! We met a lovely shop keeper and bought our fruit - she gave us free apricots. delicious. We have ended our day people watching in Taksim square while having an early yummy dinner. Tomorrow we start with an official small tour group to continue our adventures through Türkiye.
ps for kevin and rebecca - ‘our neighbour’, opposite the road from us and also four stories up , nursing his pug out the window for a good hour - pug happy watching the people/cars below- quite the scene.もっと詳しく