Istanbul: Day 2

This morning I got up bright and early to check out the Turkish coffee scene before we had to meet as a group at 8:30. FOr breakfast, people eat Turkish bagels called simit (see picture). Today I got a bun-shaped one that had cheese inside.

Unfortunately, I didn't sleep all that well. There are a lot of stray dogs around the city that were barking that woke me up, and of course the 4ish am Muslim call to prayer. Today was a holiday in Turkey, so this call wasn't heard again until 8:30-ish pm.


Here are some of the highlights of my first full day in Istanbul! Ok now the coffee update...waaay worse than Italy. I guess that can be expected, but still Turkish coffee has definitely made a name for itself! It's brewed slowly so that it's quite thick. It's usually consumed with either one or two cubes of sugar - I had one. So we did go to the first cafe place we went too, and I don't think they were serving quality coffee, but I still seriously doubt the coffee will grow on me. I am a fan of the tea, though.
Tea at an old madrassa. Between sites we took a tea break at an old madrassa, which is now a hookah lounge/cafe. The atmosphere inside was extremely relaxed!










1/3 of a giant obelisk from Egypt! If I remember correctly it's from the 15th century BC.

















Lunch at the Culinary Institute of Istanbul. This meal, although good, was very modern. I will likely not eat most of these dishes again. For appetizers we had multiple types of bread (thin cracker things, cornbread and plain old bread). The next course was yogurt and wheat soup. This was sort of strange, but decent. Next came the parsley salad with beets, tomatoes, pickled carrots and a vinaigrette. Yep, that's right parsley salad. The first bite was the strangest, but it grew on me. The best dish came next - chicken over noodles with a sundried tomato paste. Pretty self explanatory. For dessert we had a dish was was similar to lemon jello, but it was not solid like jello. Instead, it was rather soupy with a little gelatin at the top. I could barely finish this as most of the dishes had been very lemony/acidic. I did have a great glass of white wine and tea, also.

Shopping at the Grand Bazaar. This place is huge - there are 4,000 shops! The shops are grouped by the items they sell. The main categories are leather goods, jewelry, ceramics, and scarves/clothes/linens. This was much more fun than shopping in Rome because the exchange rate for the Turkish Lira is much better than the euro (1.5 TL: 1 USD).





This evening is the only evening we have free in Istanbul. After such a long day of traveling yesterday, not a great sleep, drinking tea and coffee and wine, of course I got a headache. By the time we got back to the university it was 6pm and I had to lay down.

The weather here is so much nicer than Rome! It may be a little more muggy, but it's only in the mid to upper eighties and there is always a strong breeze coming off the water. I did manage to get sunburned today, despite putting on sunscreen.

Tempted by productivity, Sarah and I walked a short distance to grab a quick bit to eat. We came to a decent looking restaurant and decided to give it a go. The waiter didn't speak English so we mainly pointed at pictures to convey what we wanted. Thinking we asked for water, we were brought milky-yogurt. Luckily, this worked out well because we also got a spicy salsa-type dish with our meal. Oh, and we can't drink tap water here so either way we would have to pay for a drink. Dinner was very good! I have no idea what type of meat it was, but it was good.