1. Women aren't allowed to park cars.
We (me, Mufasa and my GBF and host) were driven around Turkey, very generously, by my host's aunt. Who is a very good driver, confident and swiftly efficient but in the face of every single male in Turkey, is reduced to merely a set of tits behind a potential collision. In any occasion, be it a tight corner requiring meticulous navigation or a very specific and small parking place, the men, previously hiding behind bollards or traffic lights, swarm around the car, making her get out as they flex their forumla 1 muscles and zip at 100mph into the space/street/corner and come out looking self satisfied at their own macho bollocky moment in the day. And then preen themselves as the girls (rather irritatingly) generously thank them.

2. Turkey is the land of the cherry.
Stuck in a traffic jam over the Bosphorus? No problem! Just wind down your window, smile sweetly at the neighbouring car and they'll pop out a hand crammed full with cherries into your open window!
Peckish on a long journey outside Istanbul? No shortage of little old crones selling their cherry shaped wares at the side of the road. Trays and trays of delicious deep red fruit with firm green stems.

3. Chay (Tea) is drunk from glass fluted cups
And normally with sugar, arabic-style. The tea is brewed using about half the box of teabags, but the idea being that you use it like diluting juice and top it up with hot water. A good household and hosting skills depends on a pot of tea being kept happily brewing/stewing away on the stove all day in case of guests.

4. Istanbul is a traffic locked city.
To get from one side (we were on the European side) to the other for a simple dinner by the harbour one night took 3.5 hours. We were all sat, dressed to the nines, in a sweltering car on one of the bridges which had suddenly become an impasse and some impatient twat had decided to undertake across 3 lanes into the fast lane using the hard shoulder to get ahead of us and dented the front corner of our car.

5. The Hagia Sofia is nice and all but..
Here I was, after years of study and being told of the structural wonders of the Hagia Sofia, finally at the site, enjoying for myself the sheer scale and grandeur when, what's this? After having paid full whack to get in, the piece de resistance the central dome is obscured, HIDDEN, behind sheeting and scaffolding. At the height of tourist season! Surely they could find some other time to clean/restore it, or at least, much like edinburgh's trams, cease work when there'll be tourists about.

6. ..the cisterns are the real place to be.
Underground, the cistern contains water all teh way from Eastern Europe which has trickled down the Danube and through porous rock to find itself, eventually, under Istanbul. As as the medusa's head. She's now holding up a column underground and enjoying fishies nibbling at her serpentine hair.

7. Assos, past Troy, is fucking beautiful.
Wow. Forget Istanbul with its Peacock youth and European fantasies. The winding cobbled road down the side of a sheer cliff face, dotted with old greek ruins, tempes of Athenea, colosseums and churches, with the Isle of Lesbos to your right and an unbeliveably blue sea below just makes you know how this could be the cradle of modern European philosophy. It's awe-inspiring and deliciously frozen in time. The hotel we stayed in was calm and faced the sea. The old man who took me and Mufasa on a night-time boat trip to see the stars was terribly cliched but necessary, as it let me fall in love again with Mufasa despite my suspicions that it was too perfect an idea and too close to what's special to my secret core to be his.

8. Cats. everywhere.
..Which I like, so no worries but seriously- the Isle of Junda, ruled by cats.

9. You're no-one if..
You don't dress properly for clubs. I mean- borderline WAG wear. Black tie, hair done, manicured everything, perfect make-up, chaffeur etc.. no woman should pay for her drinks in the company of a man.
You must also be very rich. You're either rich or you're poor. No in-between. I'm neither but I felt very frumpy in my friend's favourite cafes as I wore clothes to be comfortable in the heat and in my thesis-expanded body.

10. The grand isle..
Always take teh sea bus. Never ever take the ferry. Suffer the 3 extra lira and please take the bus. It's faster, cleaner, more comfortable and you don't die of sunstroke as it's air conditioned.
Also, don't buy an ice-cream for the ascent to the monastery on the island. The island stinks of horse shit being that that's the only allowed form of transport. Horse siht and piss in the hot noon sun gives a special smell which reallllly does nothing for the berry and mango sorbet in your hand.

11. If someone throws water in front of you as you leave for a journey:
It's a symbol for 'bon voyage' or a wish that your journey is as easy as the flow of the water.

12. Everyone is crazy but with good intent. The television repair man, strode into the house, repaired the telly, then gave, presumably unqualified, advice to my generously proportioned host about her diet and what she should do. How inappropriate?!?!

13. It's a nice city: my favourite was the bohemian art quarter where we smoked rose and mint shisha and gave ourselves headaches and played backgammon until my head swam with dice....

14. Public transport is a no-no.

15. But do fly Easyjet!