A Turkish Delight

Growing up my family often gathered for an Easter meal of ham and all the trimmings.  This Easter Tom and I decided on Turkey, the country though, not the food.  Although we couldn't gather with family this Easter, we were fortunate in being able to gather with some friends from home.  Lisa and Andrew flew to Istanbul from Toronto to spend the long weekend with us.  It's my blog, and I'll believe that they came just for us if I want to.  Thank you Lisa and Andrew!

With only about a two hour flight, Tom and I arrived in Istanbul a couple of hours earlier than Lisa and Andrew, so we did some walking around random streets and along the water in Istanbul.  Tom spotted a dolphin diving, which I thought he was making up until I saw several myself.  It was better than Marineland!
We met Lisa and Andrew on Friday evening for dinner.  It wasn't the best meal we had in Istanbul, but the beer was cold, the company was great, and the weekend's first round of baklava was delicious.

After a good night's sleep (better for Tom and I who were not on "Canada time", and who are used to 5am call to prayer), we met after breakfast and followed the tourist trail.  We started at the Basilica cistern, an underground water storage facility.  Tom and Andrew seemed really enjoyed taking pictures, and Lisa smiled through gritting teeth, now having to compete with two cameras instead of one to make it to the exit. 

Next we went to Istanbul's most famous attractions, the Blue Mosque, pictured behind Lisa and Andrew in the picture above, and Aya Sofya.  Both buildings were stunning, inside and out.  I found Aya Sofya particularly interesting, as it was initially a cathedral, but was converted to a mosque.  There is still plenty of evidence of its differing identities.  

After lunch we went for the necessary, if not infamous, Turkish bath.  You wouldn't go to France and not try french baguette would you?!  The boys opted for the self-serve option, and it sounds to me like they lounged around in pools and saunas for a couple hours.  Lisa and I decided to go all out and include the massage, a term used quite loosely to describe what was to come.  The first stop was the changeroom where we were instructed by a woman in too-small underwear to change into our birthday suits.  Thankfully she did give us towels to walk to the pools... more than can be said about the later trips around the bath.  The next couple of hours exceed the PG rating of this blog.  Let's just say that by the end I had shed plenty of dead skin and a little inhibition. 

You can tell that I was traveling with another female for once.  We followed the "spa" with shopping.  We went to Istanbul's famous Grand Bazaar, a maze of sensory overload.  Stores full of beautifully coloured scarves, pottery, rugs, lamps, jewelry and more lined the seemingly endless aisles.  I felt well-prepared for scarf shopping, having already experience in it in Cairo.  I thought that using my Egyptian scarf as a frame of reference would make for logical bargaining.  It may have been optimistic to believe that logic would help in bargaining.  I was kindly told that my Egyptian scarf was "a piece of junk" compared to Turkish scarves.  It only took two stores and some playful bargaining to get a Turkish scarf for the same price as my Egyptian one.  Score! 

I really loved the pottery in Turkey, so I made Tom do the bargaining for some bowls.  After leaving his favourite bowls over a couple of dollars and feeling non-buyer's remorse, he did find another store with nearly identical bowls that he managed to get for the price he wanted.  

After such a tough day, we headed back to our hostels for a nap (I guess I can't talk for Lisa and Andrew).  We met again in the evening and snacked on street food on our way to dinner.  I know it's not good to spoil your meal, but I don't think pastry with cheese it in could ever spoil anything.  Thankfully we did put that little bit of fuel into our tanks, as our lack of knowing where we'd have dinner turned into about an hour-long walk to finally settle on a restaurant that was busy and had a vegetarian dish on the menu.  That one vegetarian dish, vegetable casserole, was delicious. 

We left the restaurant to explore Istanbul's hopping nightlife.  The pedestrian street we were on was jam-packed with people, and there was thumping music coming from many establishments.  We agreed on the one that had dancing people visible in the window.  It had to be fun.  It was!  There was an eclectic mix of Turkish, English, and French music, with my favourite song being the dance remix of "I've had the Time of My Life" from Dirty Dancing.  We even broke out our dance moves, which may have been a touch more provocative than the average dance move in a club in a Muslim country. 

This late night (for us old people anyway) led to another good night's sleep, and a pretty lazy next morning.  Tom and I found a church to celebrate Easter mass, and we met Lisa and Andrew around lunch time.  We walked to Taksim square, "the heart of modern Istanbul" according to my guide book.  It was not more interesting than a traffic circle in Cornwall or Barrhaven.  Tom and I grabbed "gozleme" for lunch, sometimes called "Turkish pancakes" although they are more pastry than pancake, wrapped around yummy savoury filling, spinach and feta in our case.  These were SO good!  Canada really needs to work on its street pastries. 

We checked out the modern art museum, Lisa bought some suprisingly reasonably priced Ray Bans, then Lisa and I had Turkish ice cream, which is not nearly as good as North American ice cream, in my humble opinion.  Next we went to the spice market.  It was a feast for the senses (and cameras of course), with great smells and colourful displays all around. 

Before heading for dinner we relaxed on a rooftop terrace with a view of Europe and Asia.  Turkey is actually in both continents, and a fairly short bridge connects the two continents.  Dinner plus more delicious baklava brought us to the end of our third day in Istanbul. 

We decided to use our last day to see Topkapi Palace, the residence of Ottoman sultans for several hundred years.  The grounds were very pretty, with more green than we've seen in months.  Every room was ornately decorated, with beautiful patterned tiles and elaborately painted ceilings.  The treasury included an 86 carat diamond which was purchased for 3 spoons.  That person must have been even better at bargaining than me.

Pide (Turkish pizza) for lunch, followed by baklava of course, plus some Turkish delight for good measure, brought us to the time to part ways.  Sadly (for us) Tom and I were headed back to Cairo to work, while Lisa and Andrew were heading out for some travel in other parts of Turkey.  We've had a good year of travel, it can't always be our turn.