a new health maxim

In the spirit of well-known rules of thumb such as “every cigarette takes 7 minutes off of your life,” I’m going to propose a new one: “every ferry ride in Istanbul adds 6 hours to your life.” Good for the lungs, good for the moods.

Usually it’s an early morning thing for me in Istanbul, but in some ways it’s even better at night, seeing the lights on the bridge go on if you do it exactly at dusk.

That’s what Istanbul has over Cairo: the sea. The Nile is an impressive river, don’t get me wrong. But it’s still a river, not the sea.