Istanbul in Summer

As I am continuing my month long blitz around my market, I am finally to Istanbul. My first moments here I was thrilled- finally cooler, wonderful hotel, a great business group to deal with, and an historic old City. But then funny thing- it's in the 90's here and humid- yuck. And then I started to notice all the people at the intersections trying to sell kleenex's packs, and flowers, and even pens. So this means: I'm not a tourist anymore. :-( I have been here so much that I have lost my "everything in this city is wonderful" perspective, and now, it is another city I do business in. Awe. It made me sad when I realized this, and then it got worse because I started to notice all the children trying to sell me Kleenex packages, and following me begging me to help them. It was heartbreaking until I realized that they have been taught their whole life how to solicit and heckle the tourists. We were driving down the highway today to cross over to the Asia side of Istanbul, when we started seeing all these cars backing up the hill we were going down, and we were so shocked- like "what are these crazy people backing up the..." (as our driver throw's it in reverse and we start backing up the hill as well!!!!!) We looked ahead and saw a sea of stopped cars. There had been an accident on the bridge so traffic was gridlocked. We literally had to back up for over 2 miles in reverse! Which our driver did like it was nothing, so this must happen all the time here. Then the director from the franchise group was like "we'll just take a water taxi over", so we drove down to the Bosphorous strait and no luck- all the taxi's were booked for hours. So what could we do??? Well how bout we just ditch work and take a cruise around the Bosphorous (the Turkish Business Partner suggested it), so that is what we did. AND BOY- It sure beats working! :-) Attached are pictures of our trip around the strait- 1 hr, cool breeze, amazing views- and the best part; I got back my love for the city!