We have a fairly leisurely morning. We woke up around 8 a.m. and had breakfast. I saw that they were some recent messages on WhatsApp so I called Katy. We spent half an hour talking to her and Samantha and Ouma. Realtor needed to check on a money situation as we realize that we've been spending quite a bit more than we'd hoped given we travel to Israel which we had experienced Lots as well as generally just being a very expensive country to travel around. It also didn't help that Jamie likes to dine and wine at the other expensive places. We logged on to net banking, and after tallying all the withdrawals, found that we spent nearly $1,000 more over the 11 days than we had planned. This obviously means that we have to try and claw that money back from somewhere else . So our budget per day has now being cut down substantially. At least we are in turkey where things aren't as expensive as in other countries in Europe. After that we left our apartment and caught the métro to one of the harbor areas. This particular harbor area is next to the Golden Horn, which is the term for the river that sits between the old and new parts of turkey, which joins into the Bosphorus and the Marmara sea junction. We knew there was a river cruise available for a cheap price only 12 Turkish lira per person so we hopped on board and after waiting about 20 minutes the cruise took off. We will hoping that there was going to be some commentary, but I guess what can you expect 4 12 lira. So we cruised along for an hour or so up the bosphorus, then turned around and came back. The cruise did not finish where it started. We got off and started walking around and found ourselves in a market, but there didn't appear to be many tourists, more locals than anyone else. All kind of stuff was for sale and it was very busy given that today was a Turkish national holiday. We ate some of the local street food and then found a nice-looking cafe, for some Turkish coffee. I really like the Turkish coffee which is made by basically boiling up some coffee grinds in a small pot has a very earthy flavor to it quite rich but not very bitter if you take it with a healthy dose of sugar, its quite delicious. After relaxing for half an hour or so we left the café and made our way back to the Metro. We took the Metro back to Taksim square where Jackie had a restaurant that she was very keen to check out. We found the place and sat down and had a really delicious meal some kind of azerbaijani stew mixed in with Turkish food - not really sure it was from it was so good that I decided to take some time for dinner. We walked around for a bit longer,but by now it was reaching late evening, and we were feeling pretty tired after a epic boat for it. So we walked the rest of the way home and relaxed in our apartment with our takeout food. We managed to save $80 against our budget for the day, so hopefully the rest of the days within turkey will be somewhat reasonable and after 11 days who have made back that thousand dollars. However we will be traveling with flights which are already going to cost a bit more. We also would like to take a hot air balloon ride in Cappadocia which from what we've seen will cost around $150 per person. Everything that we have read online says that this is worth spending your money on.
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