But we'll get to that later. For now, I wish to speak on some items that stand out to me from this city.
Let us first consider Food is delicious, is it not? The answer, of course, is yes. This food, especially:
This is the breakfast I was treated to at a nearby cafe. Turkish Ravioli, or manti (without the dot on the 'i'), and turkish coffee. The pasta is wrapped around a meat filling, further reinforcing the knowledge that my vegetarian tendencies are being sidelined for this trip. Yogurt and spices top the dish. It is amazingly delicious, and I must seek to replicate this dish upon my return.
The turkish coffee was about as strong as what I like to make for myself, but it is extraordinarily thick. The drink reminds Jeremy of a forest due to its earthiness, but I am more of a damp-log-with-lichen kind of guy. I understand his sentiments, however.
At this breakfast I managed to steal half of Jeremy's red pepper dish as well, which was quite good as well.
Another thing to consider in Istanbul is the architecture. I find it utterly beautiful when the old and the new come along side by side in a city, and no city I have visited has been quite so jumbled as Istanbul. Observe:
Mosques and ancient buildings dot the map, with new shops, homes, and offices filling in between. I find myself thinking of a perverted form of "Where's Waldo", where instead of a red and white striped man the viewer singles out the ancient structures on the landscape. Utterly gorgeous.
Finally, let us consider tourism. Jeremy and I made the fateful decision to actually visit some of the more famous areas on the European side of Istanbul and toured the Blue Mosque, the Grand Bazaar, and some of the surrounding areas. It was completely different from the Istanbul I have been learning of thus far. Jeremy despises it, while I find it merely an interesting difference between what Istanbul is and what it represents itself as to the world. The shop owners are far more hawkish in promoting their wares and getting foreigners into their shops. Two seperate vendors tried to take us from busy intersections and sequester us in their carpet shops a few blocks away. It was quite surreal. Perhaps the best moment was during our tour of the Grand Bazaar. A man claiming to be from Sicily drew us aside to promote his shop (knickknacks and baubles, largely), and at one point he advertised to some passersby, "I wish to sell you something you don't need!"
I believe the sentence was meant in jest, but it fit with everything I saw of the place (with the possible exception of an excellent pottery shop in the area, which had a lower floor filled with amazing near-replicas of several different types of turkish pottery and had an amazingly informative and pleasant owner).
The maws of consumer hell (it reminded me of Hong Kong)
Honestly, as long as you go into the Grand Bazaar expecting them to try ripping you off and you want to buy useless things, it is quite fun. It is almost as crowded as some of the most popular street markets in Hong Kong, and it has a very similar feel to the commerce. The main difference is that you have a covered roof above you instead of towering monoliths of concrete rising into the sky from either side. Well, and the vendors are Turkish instead of Cantonese, of course. The similarities still stand.
While Jeremy and I could not get into the Hagia Sophia today (it is closed on Mondays) and we did not care to spend the money to enter the palace on this day, we did visit the Blue Mosque.
This thing is huge. Utterly huge.
I have a ton of pictures from this area in general, but I promised myself to only inflict a bare minimum upon you at this time. How else will I force friends to watch a slideshow of my trip? (That's what you do to friends, correct? Harm their free time and will to live by barraging them with photos of things they haven't done?)
Well, okay, a few more.
The entrance is up a set of handicap-unfriendly stairs
Gorgeous.
This should give a bit of a better sense of scale. This sucker must be at least 20-30 stories tall.
Alright, that's it. I promi-
WAIT One more! After the tour Jeremy and I cross the Bosporus again and walked forever, had dinner, and then walked forever some more. The dinner, however, was great. We waited for the call for fasting to end, and then had a traditional meal with dates, lentil soups, breads, meat and rice, and some amazingly sugary dessert that I could not begin to describe at this time.
That thing at the lower right is the dessert of doom. It is crispy brown on top, but it is made of shredded... something, something that has been soaked in sugar with walnuts lightly mixed in. The green on top is pistachio. Jeremy has taught me that everything green in this country is pistachio. EVERYTHING.
This is Turkish Tea. I have had it before, but forgot to take a picture until now. It is quite delicious and bitter. If you are the type to enjoy sugar, Turks use sugar cubes. I've seen some keep the cube in their mouth and regulate how much of it goes into each sip that way. Personally, I do not care for using sugar.
I am finished now, I swear.
-Hyde
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