What the guide books don't tell you.

Not to complain, but here are a few surprises we've hit so far:

1. Cats - There are cats everywhere. Small, very pretty with large heads and ears, skinny, somewhere between domesticated and feral. On Friday Mark counted them and was well into the thirties before the day's end - and we didn't travel far. A few sad looking dogs here and there, but hundreds of cats everywhere. They really need a spaying program here.
   
2. Turkish - The phrase book we bought made it sound so easy. It's not. We just can't get the hang of this language. The locals virtually all speak a little English so it's not a problem - we are, after all, in the touristy neighborhood. We've tried having each of us memorize one word, but even that's pretty much a failure. Good-bye has 2 forms - the easy one is what you say when you're the one who's staying and naturally, the hard form is what you way when it's you who is leaving, which is us every time. Thank you is also complicated, even with the cute trick of "tea" "sugar" something-or-other. We are hopeless. Nick's doing the best of us all, but that's still just with the 5 or 6 basic words. I'm starting to recognize a few words in writing, but every site we've visited has signs in English, which seems to be the universal language - I've seen people reading signs in English and speaking to their group in Italian, French, etc.
   
3. Costs - Our guidebooks are WAY off. Everything is much more expensive than we though. Entrance to the museums, listed as 8 lira turned out to be 20 lira, food, listed as 5 or 6 lira, is 10 or 11 lira. Taxis are relatively cheap, and thankfully so is water, but we've been told that inflation is very high.
4. Credit cards - Again, a problem with the guidebooks - they didn't mention that most of the museums and restaurants don't take credit cards. With 4 of us and a limited amount we can take out from the cash machine, we're hitting it up once a day to pay for admissions and food.