Istanbul ~ Street Food!

What would a vacation be is without sampling some of the street food! Here is what we came across in Istanbul. There are a ton of doner kebab vendors and each with differant kinds of meats and preperations. My favorite was the Durom Doner which the best way to describe it as a Turkish Burrito. The fillings are placed in a very thin flour like wrap that was a bit stretchy and not brittle like a tortilla can be. Kebab meat (chicken or lamb) is scrapped off and the rest of the burrito is filled with lettuce, tomatoes, pickles, and sometimes french fries. All for 3 Lira.... good deal! Pictures of more food below!

WTF? El Torito? Well, at least they were selling "Dondurma" the Turkish elastic ice cream made with wild orchid tubers. It can stretch up to 2' long! There are a lot of dondurma vendors and most of them have bells above the ice cream containers and they ring them to attract tourists. It was hot, but we resisted the urge to eat some.

"Simit" ~ basically a pretzel with sugar or sesame seeds. Yummy.

Corn - Roasted or Boiled. 1 Lira. Available everywhere. Your going to need a toothpick after this one.

Fish Sandwich off the boats at Eminonu. The ultimate and cheap Turkish fast food.

The pickle juice to go with it.

Eating pierside with the locals.

Below ~ some videos of the crazyness! The boats are rocking and fish smells yummy!

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Istanbul ~ Part 2 ~ Blue Mosque, Hagia Sophia, and Topkapi Palace

We spent Sunday seeing the sights and relaxing. We ate street food most of the day and took many breaks on park benches and gazed at the water.

The Blue Mosque was first after strolling by the Hippodrome Square containing the Egyptian Obelisk, Serpentine Column, and Hippodrome. We both had never been in a mosque before so the experience of covering my head and taking off our shoes was a new one. The place has pretty plush carpeting and the walls and ceilings are covered in beautiful blue iznik tiles. They kept tourists behind a small wooden gate separating the worshipers from visitors. I overheard a tour guide saying there is markings in the carpet to show worshippers how to line up and keep proper spacing. The women's section was in the back (behind the visitor section) so that they can prey and show modesty. *me rolling eyes* The blue mosque has six minarets where the call to prayer is announced from. Legend has it that the architect misheard "six" instead of "gold-capped" which altered the original design of only two minarets. The two words are "altin" (gold) and "alti" (six).

Hagia Sophia was right across the street and had a 20 Lira entrance fee! Ouch! It was worth it and was our favorite monument of the day. It was built in 537 and was a Christian church for many years. In the 15th century it was converted to a mosque. There is really so much history and stuff to see here I couldn't possible cover it all. The place is pretty photogenic and has nice natural lighting shining in from the galleries. The must see items in it are the weeping pillar which people touch for healing powers and the coronation square where the byzantines thought the center of the universe was! There are a lot of biblical mosiacs including ones with Jesus and Mary. Odd considering it has been a mosque for so long and Muslims don't like to adorne their places of worship with figures of people. (They believe it distracts from worshiping the big main god).

After lunch we spent our afternoon trying to find and strolling around the Topkapi Palace. Another 20 Lira each entrance fee. and this time we felt ripped off. The main sight to see there is the Harem where the sultan's wives lived but it was another 15 Lira fee! We skipped it even though the guide book told us it was a must! The palace property is pretty huge and is located right on the "Golden Horn". We took some pictures of Asia as we felt like we were standing on the edge or Europe. We saw some jewels and some clothes worn by the sultans, nothing to interesting. The only remotely interesting thing was there was a small portion of the palace that you couldn't take pictures in. It contained some Islamic holy items including an impression of Mohammaed's footprint, a tooth, and about 7-8 containers of his hair! Apparently, when he died he told people to distribute him around.......... and now some is locked up in glass for tourists to see. The other holy items were swords, koran locks, etc. At the end of this building was a guy live in the flesh just reading the koran page by page. He was sitting behind a desk with a microphone and two large monitors played the words in Arabic and English. It kinda creeped me out.

The rest of the evening was spent in Beyoglu which is easily accessible by Tram and Inclinator. It is modern shopping area of town with charming side streets full of places to eat, have a drink, or smoke hooka. Lots of brand names stores and very crowded! We had some dinner and strolled along back to the old city and to our hotel.

Hagia Sophia

Inside Hagia Sophia - Double Collumnade

Me

Blue Mosque

Asia!

Blue Iznik Tile Work at Topkapi Palace

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Turkish Efes Beer

In Turkey, the taps are dominated by Efes. Whenver you order a beer, this is what your getting. It is light crisp and refreshing. Not at all weak and watery. Perfect standard beer to appease all sorts of beer drinkers. Not too hoppy, not too dry, just perfect.

Efes Regular

Efes Dark

Brewed by Efes Breweries International

Pilsner Style, 5%

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Istanbul ~ Part 1 ~ Turkish Cooking Class, Egyptian Spice Market, and Grand Bazaar

There is so much to say about our trip to Istanbul it is going to be broken up into several blog posts. First it will be about our arrival, the cooking class and the egyptian spice market. Also it will be our fantastic fish dinner with locals Rob met for business and our adventure thru the Grand Bazaar. Next it will be on the major monuments/ tourist sights that are a must see! In between these posts I may throw in some beer and food posts to keep you salivating to go.

We took the long way. We first drove to Zurich, caught a flight to Amsterdam, and then caught a plane to Istanbul. We arrived at 1 AM just to sit on the plane for another half an hour when we landed. The airport health officials were copying health worksheets for the flu pandemic. They passed them out on the plane and we had to fill them out before we could exit the aircraft. Turkish officials met us directly outside the door to the airplane wearing masks and collecting the worksheets. Since the WHO (in Geneva of all places) declared swine flu a pandemic, the Turkish were taking it seriously.

We then had to buy visas for 15 euros each and proceed thru immigration. I smiled at the immigration guy to match my picture. He found it funny that this American was trying to match the picture and he laughed at me. A driver from the hotel was holding a sign with my name on it when we exited the baggage claim and we sleepily followed him to his van. This guy drove really really fast and once in a while would stop and yell things out the window to people he knew of the street. It was an odd late night experience for our arrival. Once we got to our hotel and the front desk guy gave us about a million brochures for tours, we finally got to bed about 2:30 AM. They upgraded our room to the only suite in the place and it had a humongous bed but only two pillows. Why have such a huge bed with so few pillows?

The next morning, after a quick hotel breakfast and little sleep, we wandered out to another part of the old city where we signed up for cooking classes. We took cooking classes in Thailand on our honeymoon and loved it so we were hoping for another great experience. The normal dutch expat instructor wasn't there so we had "Fayzi", one of the main local chefs to help teach. With his broken English he instructed us to chop, stir, and fry. It was quite a fun experience. We took the class with 4 other Americans all living abroad this year. One couple was from Germany and the other were two students finishing up a year in York, England. It was nice to chat with people who had such similar yet different experiences. We made a red lentil spicy bulgar soup, long beans, fried zucchini cakes, lamb stuffed eggplant, and dates stuffed with walnuts cooked in simple sugar. Delicious!

Afterwards the whole group walked together to the Egyptian Spice Market and split ways from there. I sampled some Turkish delights and we kept walking up to the Grand Bazaar. We lost ourselves in the bazaar and bought some things that fancied our eyes. There were rows and rows and rows of vendors all in this huge covered space. The center of the market is the oldest part and sells the true antiques. The covering is made of brick domes instead of tiles and painted other domes of the market. We found out that some Turkish people can haggle way better then the others and it coincided with how good of deals we made.

We headed back to our hotel to rest our feet before dinner. Rob and I were going out with some local people that his business is working with in Turkey. They picked us up and brought us to an authentic great fresh fish restaurant. We didn't have to do any ordering as they did it all. It had an amazing view of the Sea and the food was fantastic. They happened to know the owner and manager and I think we got extra taken care of. The mezes (small appetizers) were yummy and the fish was perfectly grilled. Rob joined in on the "Raki" drinks with dinner.l Raki is like the Turkish version of the Greek Ouzo. (spelling?) The liquor is poured into a glass and then water is poured on top. Magically, two clear substances make a white fuzzy colored drink which they top with ice. Tasted like anise seed and Rob found it refreshing.

It was late and we had a wonderful dinner and great company. Half the table only spoke Turkish so it was up to one guy to translate back and forth. He did a lot of talking!

Stuffed Eggplants

Turkish Cooking Class

Feyzi and Rob. Look at that big knife!

Turkish Delights at the Egyptian Spice Market. Free Samples!

Spices at the Spice Market.

For more pictures of our Istanbul trip, including pictures to be used in future posts of this trip, Click Here.

For more information about the cooking class we took, Click Here.

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