Emirgan Park: A Day of Tulips

But no Triffids, sadly for us. Or maybe that's okay.

So today we went to Emirgan Park to take a gander at the tulips.

Don't worry. More tulips are forthcoming.

Everyone else in Istanbul had the same idea so it was fucking crowded. Also a lot of people were getting married because people in Turkey get married all the time. It was a good day, not too hot but nice, with a big group of us and LE was the only kid there so everyone was happy to pay attention to him. That's pretty much all he asks from the world.

One nice thing that happened was when LE had to pee. The line for the women's was 8 people long. Something I've never figured out in Turkey is what the hell women here do in the toilets that takes so long, but they take fucking forever which means we were looking at like half an hour in that line. So I brought him over to the gents and told him he could just go by himself. He was cool with that. The other fellows in the line were as nice as could be, even though we all felt a little embarrassed about me being in the man line. They even let LE cut the line, and gave him a hand with the paper towels and stuff. So that was cool.

It's nice being able to not feel the American Stranger Danger about the whole bathroom thing. And yeah, I just split the hell out of that infinitive because that's how I roll. And I live in a place where you can let a strange man help your kid in the toilet and that's cool.

With that, let nothing else get in the way of the tulips. Because tulips are fucking amazing, seriously.

LE with tulips. 

Tulips with grape hyacinth. Which grows wild here, by the way.

LE with grape hyacinth.

Grape hyacinth extreme close up!

White tulips!

Pink tulips!

White tulips with some other tulips!

A slightly different shade of pink tulips!

More pink tulips that LE took a picture of!

Cool tulips!

A cunning arrangement of tulips!

From a slightly different angle!

Extreme close up!

Pointy red tulips!

The same ones, but closer!

LE riding a pretend tulip!

Pink tulips with charming white flowers!

Variegated orange tulips with charming white flowers!

A fabulous view!

Here it is!

Here it is again, only slightly different!

Here it is again all close up!

I'm speechless!

Tulips that look like İznik tiles.

Tulips that kill me.

An array of tulips.

The same array, but without the pink ones in the foreground.

Sexy tulip close up.

More white tulips!

Oh no! White tulips, watch out for the red tulips!

Tulips that look like fire.

Pinkish tulips with a scary yellow yabancı tulip lurking amongst them...

Tulips that look like a different kind of fire!

Tulips so red the human eye can't quite process them.

Extreme sexy dirty close up of ultra red tulips! I invaded their tulip-y privacy! Hah!

These are nice tulips.

Another sweet view. This sort of thing happens all the time in Istanbul.

And with that, I'll say nothing else because I have no business upstaging the tulips further... I love saying tulips now!