How Would You Take A Snail to Constantinople?
Speaking of fun toys ... Google Books is fun to play with, whether you have serious research aims or merely a penchant for reading old books (such as the Travels of John Mandeville from the 14th Century (the original is not available to Canadian Googlers, only American)). I tend to search for Istanbul/Constantinople quite often, for the simple pleasure of reading travel items and geographical/historical works written with a Medieval, Renaissance or Victorian flavour. The places they describe are vaguely familiar and yet mysterious at the same time, speaking as they do of a Turkey I've never seen: population much less dense, countryside much cleaner, evidence of Islam everywhere but the cities more cosmopolitan than they ever appear now. Recently, my uncle over at Snail's Tales searched for both Constantinople and snails, and one of the results was Method in Almsgiving by Matthew Weston Moggridge, first published in 1882. As Aydın says, the book has nothing to do with eit...