Turkey is never on my list until Mr. Travels mentions it. It has a unique location of touching both Asia and Europe, and always give me a mysterious feel from the movies. We hopped on a plane and here we are Istanbul!
Turkish care about their tea, and their tea set – they are either made of glass or silver. The most frequently seen tea cup has a unique shape comparing to normal tea cups; the body of the cup has a curve where you put the fingers around to hold the cup. Local people call tea “chai”, so you kind of get a hint of where the name Chai Tea Latte comes from. Wherever we ate, chai was offered either when we first sat down or to finish the meal with dessert, always with some sort of warm baklava.
Speaking of baklava, we were blown away by how many varieties of them were there! Every shop seemed to have their own twist of shapes or flavors. Pistachio was the classic but our favorite was the walnut!
Food in a local diner is always a good idea, especially when you find yourself as the only foreigners inside. We were purely drawn by how these pastries looked from passing by the place! Finally we got the börek with meat filling. Börek was such a general form of food that it has so many varieties in shapes and flavors, check it out here.(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Börek)
Walking by the street, we noticed signs of “pasta”, but the store looked nothing like an Italian place, then we realized in Turkish, cake is called pasta. What a coincident! Pastries, cookies and cakes options were endless, the presentation of the cakes was artistic, and the price was lovely too. This beautiful banana and chocolate cake was about $8. Yep, in the States, this price would get you a piece. So with no hesitance, we bought the whole cake, and indulged ourselves for the next couple of days. :)
A few more pictures of the local food – grilled vegetable as a side dish, sweet potato dessert with syrup and cream, salep (a rich, hot beverage made with hot milk and sugar that is thickened with some sort of flour), and my favorite bread – still don’t know the name, but it was so soft, with a cheesy and sticky filling.
Walking across the bridge over Bosporus, everywhere seemed to be a picture-istic spot – mosques at the backdrop, with the hustle and bustle of the towns, and at the very front, you have the Bosporus and hundreds of flying birds.
The Grand Bazaar was truly a maze. At one point, we stumbled into an exit but decided to go back in the market as we were there for less than 3 minutes. Then you know the story – for the next solid 30 minutes, we were looking for the next possible exit and there was nothing to be found, because everything started to look the same.
During our stay, we joined a Bosporus tour. After a little hike, we came to the top of a park by the Bosporus, where we had a gorgeous view on the city. It reminded me a lot of Prague, for some reason. I guess it was the river and red roof tops.
We took a short flight to a southern city called Izmir, where we joined a tour of Ephesus, an ancient Greek town. This was probably our favorite for the entire Turkey trip! The town was preserved in a unique way that you can still walk down the ancient street, explore the leftover stones of the library, and wander in the outdoor theater from the old days.
Izmir is a coastal city, so we gotta try the seafood – whole grilled fish! Fresh and juicy. There was a cat roaming by our table and could not leave us alone. Guess if I were the cat, I wouldn't want to leave either.
PS: does anyone know the tricks of rotating pictures on Steemit? We checked a few blogs but nothing seemed to work for us.