And speaking of amazing things...Istanbul. Mike took me there for my surprise birthday trip back in early December, and I told him as we were getting on the plane that what I appreciate most about these surprise birthday trips--as in, the ones where I don't know the destination until we're at the airport--is that I get to go to places I really, really want to visit, but also ones that I might ordinarily be a little too chicken to plan for myself, since they intimidate me a bit. I have been completely fascinated by Istanbul since college, when I saw a photo of Hagia Sophia and knew I had to see it someday, but the place also a little scary in how crazy the language is and how foreign the city seems from afar. However. Istanbul turned out to be one of the more fascinating places I've been.
Ok, I think maybe the most fascinating.
The place felt so different from anywhere we've been, yet very friendly, and bustling, and noisy, and crowded, and a wee bit scary, and packed to the gills with history, interesting--and nice!--people, and marvelous things to see and eat. And also a place that we will have to visit again, as I'm still a bit obsessed with it.* (And on that note, let me just say that this post is really more for me than it is for you...I had such an amazing time there that I really don't want to forget any of it. So I'm going to write it all down.)
Anyway...on to the good stuff! Mike found us a lovely room at the gorgeous little Seraglio Hotel, which turned out to be almost literally within a stone's throw of the Blue Mosque. After navigating the hour-long trip there from the airport (and on public transportation, no less! well done, Mike, although I could have done without the near-creaming-by-a-gigantic-tourist-bus bit), we were kindly greeted by a lovely local man who promptly gave us a hard time and some fresh-squeezed orange juice, and announced he liked Americans, because we could take some ribbing. (I loved him instantly.) And then we were off. First stop: the Blue Mosque. (I still find it surreal that we were actually there.)
It's a bit back-lit, but you can still see how ridiculously impressive it is. This place is big. (Its official name is the Sultan Ahmet mosque, and it was built from 1609 through 1616.)
Mosque kitteh. I have never seen so many stray animals in all my life...kittehs and goggies everywhere! And with very few exceptions, they all seemed rather healthy and friendly.
First view of the interior. Although it looks a bit greenish here, they call it the Blue Mosque because of all the blue-and-white Iznik tiles on the walls. And also the heaps and heaps of blue designs painted on the arches and domes.
An only slightly better view of the tiles (lower on the wall) and painted designs.
View of Hagia Sophia from in front of the Blue Mosque. These things are across the street from each other (as if one by it self wasn't enough to overwhelm).
Blue Mosque from Hagia Sophia.
Next, we headed just around the corner from Hagia Sophia to see the Basilica Cistern, which was built in 532 by the Roman emperor Justinian. Somehow, despite the fact that the place is 65 m wide and 143 m long (roughly 213 by 470 feet), once held 80,000 gallons of water (!), and contains 336 columns, it was forgotten over time, and only rediscovered in 1545 when the locals found that they could draw water--and catch fish!--through holes in their basement floors. Thankfully, the cistern been cleaned and restored several times since, and was pretty ridiculously spectacular. You know, for being essentially a storage room.
It's pretty impressive inside. (Yep...this is entirely underground.)
No one is sure why, but a couple of columns have these giant Medusa heads as bases.
Additional gratuitous column shot. You can't see them, but there were tons of fish in that water, which was at most a couple of feet deep.
Back outside the cistern, by virtue of Mike's inability to say no and my desperate need for a restroom, we were lured into a rug shop, whereupon we were plied with cups of apple and cherry "teas" and very nearly convinced to buy a fancy Turkish rug, which is what I suppose most people end up doing. Fortunately for Mike's wallet, I am able to say no, despite all of the seriously gorgeous rugs these poor men kept hauling out for us, and then stood there fluffing so that we could see the rugs' colors change in the light. Those guys, and their charming salesman, worked hard, and I felt a little guilty for wasting their time, but my gift for finding-the-most-expensive-item-in-a-place-before-actually-knowing-any-prices reared its ugly head, and so the rug I most wanted turned out to be the one we were the least willing to pay for. I think the poor salesman was shocked when we walked out the door with no rug, but hey...he was the one unwilling to cut the price by two thirds.**
All that, and we still had time to go back to our hotel and change for dinner. Which Mike had thoughtfully booked at NAR, a restaurant that specializes in "traditional and historical Turkish cuisine" and prides itself on using local, seasonal, and natural ingredients. Yes, please. We ate actual heaps of food, small-plate style: we started with a mung bean salad (mas piyazı, with mint, red peppers, pomegranate syrup, olive oil, tomatoes, parsley, and spicy green onions), stuffed calamari (maybe kalamar dolması, with minced beef, raisins, and spices), and a square of fresh cheese served with some fantastic, sesame-topped puffy bread. Then it was on to these amazing crunchy dumplings (saray mantisı, I think) stuffed with meat and served with a yogurt sauce and a light tomato sauce; and a serving of flaky, multi-layered pastry with cheese, parsley, and a yogurt mint sauce (name way too long to re-type here!). Next came the meat courses: kuzu tandır, or slow-roasted lamb shoulder, served with pilaf (of rice, spices, currants, pine nuts!) and grilled veggies (including a couple of super hot green peppers); and some dolma--grape leaves stuffed with minced meat and rice, and served with yogurt and tomato sauces. Thankfully, we were smart enough to know when we were beaten and so didn't order dessert...but my thoughtful husband had told the restaurant that this was my birthday dinner, and so we received a plate of mystery dessert with a sparkler on top. Can't actually figure out what it was that we ate, but I believe there were crushed poppy seeds, rolled together with perhaps chocolate and rosewater or honey, and definitely unsweetened whipped cream and crushed pistachios on top. Delicious, whatever it was!
Saw these lovely gourd lights strung across the street on the way to dinner.
Yes, folks, it is a rare sighting of a photo of me. Please keep the noise to a minimum, as we don't want to scare it away. (The mystery dessert is on the table between us. We look surprisingly happy for two people who have just overeaten all of everything.)
Had to walk past this on the way back to the hotel. Talk about drama.
Day two started bright and early-ish with a culinary walking tour of the back streets of Istanbul, led by a local. (Does my husband know me, or what??) I knew it would be at least a half-day affair, but I had no idea that we would be eating more-or-less constantly for the next 7 hours. It was glorious. (And also, Ana Gasteyer--whom you may know from such SNL sketches as Bobby and Marty Culp, Celine Dion, Martha Stewart, Barbra Streisand, and the Delicious Dish, and has done other truly interesting things since then, but let's face it, I'm a gigantic sucker for an SNL alum--was on our tour with her husband, Charlie! I was a bit starstruck for the next couple of hours, but it wore off, thankfully, and everyone in our tour group turned out to be delightful, and just really pleasant and friendly and fun.)
Our rendezvous point was this square just outside of the Spice Market, which was packed with market stalls. Here, fresh fishies from the Bosphorus. (That's our guide's hand, gesturing to the local bluefish [top right corner], which were her favorite. Those are anchovies on the lower right.)
Cheese, glorious cheese, was all over the place! Seriously, there was so much cheese.
All manner of dried things: loofahs, eggplant, chilies, okra, intestines for sausage casing...
Heaps and heaps of spices. This was the place to buy them--the cheapest we saw them anywhere. (The green stuff in the back, next to the hair color boxes, is henna.)
Turkish teapots.
First stop on the tour: breakfast in this crazy quasi-interior alley next to a teensy kitchen wherein men were preparing tea and coffee for delivery to the businesses in the building. We opted to try the infamous Turkish coffee, which is quite delicious if you get medium sugar and let the foam on top go down (and then only drink about two thirds of it...no mud for us!). The rest of breakfast was a sharp, soft sheep's cheese; clotted buffalo cream with honey; black olives; and simit, which is kinda like a soft pretzel covered in sesame seeds. Everything was good, but the dairy products were just unreal.
Next stop: a dried-fruits-and-nuts shop (one of about a zillion), wherein we could sample anything we wanted. Lots of figs, apricots, raisins, nuts (raw and roasted, and the best Corn Nuts we've ever had, plus some tasty seasoned cashews), dates, etc., etc., etc. The best was when our guide, Gonca, wrapped half of a walnut in half of a fig...it was ridiculously delicious. (Full disclosure: this was the first time I've ever eaten a dried fig outside of a Newton, and it was positively a revelation.)
Next stop: literally a hole in the wall where this man was roasting kokoreç, which sounds horrendously unappetizing--intestine stuffed with offal and fat--but which turned out to be tremendously awesome, when finely diced and stir-fried with peppers, tomatoes, garlic, and spices, and then served on a roll. This was the first time in my life I actually wanted more tripe. (Interesting note: this dish is actually now illegal in the EU. Thankfully, Turkey hasn't joined it yet, 'cause that would be a huge culinary loss.)***
The further from the Spice Market we got, the more the market looked like this. (More goods, less touristy, but still packed.) Lots of booths had Christmas decorations for sale, oddly enough.
Next up was a quick walk through an Ottoman-era han, which has been used for centuries (!) as a marketplace for a single type of good. (In this case, it was burlap...an entire market of it!) According to Gonca, if a customer comes looking for something and a vendor doesn't have it, he directs the customer to someone that does. (Traditionally, people who shop in hans are extremely loyal to their vendors, and vice versa, although the vendors care more about taking care of the customer than making a sale.) Hans originally served as well-protected inns and marketplaces for merchants and caravans passing through the city, but now they're used for all sorts of other things as well. The buildings themselves usually had high, thick walls and an interior courtyard, and were at least two stories tall.
And then...baklava! We sampled loads of different kinds at Develi.
Mmmmm...window full of baklava... Traditionally, Develi's baklava has 45 layers, but they have one special variety that has 85.
This was apparently the market's Beaded Curtain District.
Turkish Delight at Altan Şekerleme, a fourth-generation candy store that makes everything in-house from only natural ingredients. We tried the rose, raisin-with-coconut, and double-roasted pistachio flavors, then brought home a kilo (including my favorite, pomegranate-and-pistachio) to share. By far the best and most tender Turkish Delight I've ever tried. (Still don't see how it'd be worth betraying your family for a boxful, though...)
Next, we stopped for tea and helva in an honest-to-goodness caravanserai, another centuries-old inn for trading caravans passing through the area.
The interior courtyard of this one was gorgeous, and it's used in the summer as an outdoor theater.
Pistachio and sesame helva, also purchased from Altan Şekerleme. It's sold in blocks, obviously, and is essentially a super-thick paste made from sweetened, crushed sesame seeds. (This one had pistachios and tasted WAY better than the description sounds.)
We next arrived at Bereket Döner, which Gonca swears is the best kebab shop in the city, and who were we to argue? This man gets up ridiculously early every day and makes a fresh kebap stack--which you can see here is lamb slices that have been soaked in milk overnight, and then layered with tomatoes and fantastic spicy green peppers--and then, once you've ordered your sandwich, rubs the open sandwich bread down the stack before slicing the meat. HOLY SMOKES, WAS IT AMAZING.
My kebab and fresh-pressed pomegranate juice. We also sampled their lentil soup, along with this bizarre-yet-compellingly-tasty drink called şalgam suyu, or "turnip juice," which is made from the juice of pickled red carrots, fermented turnips, salt, and spices. It's salty, sour, spicy, traditionally served with kebap, and weirdly tasty.
As if we hadn't eaten enough, we then headed to lunch in the Kurdish part of town, which was uphill and slightly more inland. (Starting at the Spice Market, we'd been roughly walking northwest-ish paralleling the Golden Horn.) The lovely market street along which we were walking featured fruit kiosks, cheese shops, and--by far most prominently--butchers. Butchers, butchers everywhere, with all kinds of haunches and heads and entire carcasses and all manner of crazy assorted animal parts.
Lunch (by now, more like second lunch) was at Siirt Şeref Büryan Kebap Salonu, and featured pit-roasted lamb on flatbread; perde pilav (rice baked inside a thin pastry shell with currants, spices, chicken, and almonds); and ezme, one of my new favorite things--a super spicy, minced blend of tomatoes, peppers, lemon, parsley/mint, and pomegranate molasses. So tasty. And this drink, ayran, which is a blend of beaten yogurt, cold water and salt. (Also a weird one, but also oddly tasty.)
Dessert was künefe--a layer of angel hair pasta baked on top of layers of pastry, sweet cheese, sugar or rose water, and clotted cream, and then topped with crushed pistachios.
Kitteh outside the lamb restaurant. They said she'd never leave because of all the lamb she gets fed. Poor, deprived, outdoor kitteh.
This gargantuan Roman aqueduct (4th century AD) just happened to be right outside the restaurant, as well (!).
Then we walked back down the hill, across the grounds of the Shehzade mosque (built for an Ottoman sultan's son in 1548)...
...through an alleyway, where some guys happened to be steaming rice for chickpea rice...
...and finally to our last destination, Vefa Bozacisi. Boza--our third weird drink of the day--is made by fermenting bulgur with water and sugar, which produces this drink that's really more like pudding, with a tangy/slightly fermented flavor, and which is traditionally served with cinnamon and roasted chickpeas on top. (An older lady at a nearby table asked Gonca if we liked it, since it seems to be falling out of fashion with "the younger generation." It really was a weird concoction, but also pleasant, and supposedly full of vitamins. So there you have it.)
The boza shop.
And with that, friends, we came to the end of our culinary walking tour. We stopped back near the Spice Market, where Gonca helped us all buy some amazing goodies to bring home, and then we all went our separate ways, which, frankly, was a bit sad for me, because I genuinely enjoyed talking with everyone in our little group, and because we'd had such a lovely, food-stuffed day with other like-minded food nerds.**** Mike and I then decided to make a run for the Grand Bazaar, which, naturally, is a must-see on any Istanbul itinerary, and was the closest point-of-interest still open (...maximize daylight hours! is my mantra on trips such as these), and while we had zero interest in haggling over ridiculously overpriced rugs and ceramics and things, we thought we'd check out the building itself.
Cutting through the Spice Market, which isn't too shabby itself.
Ceramics in the Spice Market. Just gorgeous.
The Grand Bazaar! One of the largest covered markets in the world, containing around 60 streets, somewhere between 4,000 and 5,000 shops, two mosques, two hamams, four fountains, and several restaurants/cafes. The place is absolutely ginormous and confusing, and construction on it began sometime between 1455 and 1461, with significant enlargements/reconstruction in the 16th and 19th centuries. It's amazing, and we only saw a tiny portion of it. (Not only that, but there were market stalls the entire way from the Spice Market to the Grand Bazaar. It was nuts.)
These fantastic chandelier-y lamps were for sale everywhere, and if we'd had any place to put one, I would have brought one home. (Stupid building regulations against hanging things from the ceiling.)
And then, because we are incapable of wasting a meal in a culinary destination such as Istanbul (i.e., by not eating, despite our marathon day of doing just that), we headed north across the Golden Horn to the Beyoğlu, the newer part of the city, and Istiklal Caddesi, the main pedestrian shopping street. Which turned out to be super busy and bustling and vibrant and young and festive and all the things you want part of your city to be, especially when you're headed out looking for food and entertainment. (And also had these super ornate covered passages full of shops and restaurants, which were crazy upscale-looking and spotlessly clean.) We were thinking maybe street food, because that way we could at least share things and keep our portions relatively small, but instead we found the Nevizade Sokak area--a street o' fish restaurants, street o' pubs, and street o' singer-songwriter-live music, all crammed together in a very small, very packed amount of space. It was awesome. From a take-away shop whose entire staff gave Mike's mustache the literal thumbs-up, we ended up eating a skewer of deep-fried something--probably fish, although very mild in flavor--and then went for a plate of fresh-caught seafood at Mercan restaurant, which was extremely no-frills and, sadly, entirely open on the front side (just FYI, it can be cold in Istanbul). However. They served us absolutely stunning grilled fish (of the local pink and blue varieties, no idea what they're actually called), prawns that came with a chili-lime-parsley salsa (YUM!!), local cheese, and favas in tomato and olive oil, which we washed down with raki, the (in)famous Turkish liqueur...and Mike got to select all of our fish himself. And it was all terribly fresh. Didn't really love the licorice-y flavor of the raki, but it did warm me up quickly and considerably, and it had the bonus entertainment feature of being an entirely clear liquid that turned milky when you added water to it. (But the best part was that it was warming.)
Raki: clear in the bottle, milky when water added. Go figure.
After dinner, it wasn't too late, so as we headed back towards Sultanahmet, we stopped into the covered outdoor cafe near our hotel to hear some music and to split a nargileh. (I think it was strawberry...not to worry, though, Mom, we're not into nicotine at all--we like functioning lungs!--so it was ONLY FRUIT.)
Mike with shisha.
Musicians at the cafe: here's the singer...
...and the flautist.
And now, because this post is already ridiculously long, I'll leave you with this final video (and save days 3 and 4 for the next post...you're welcome). This was my first time in a Muslim country, and so I'd never heard the call to prayer before. (Yes, I know Turkey technically has a secular government, but over 95% of the population is Muslim, and there are absolutely elements and practices of Islam everywhere.) It was beautiful and weird and so very foreign, and it just happened to sound as we were returning to our hotel after dinner the first night--and were just outside the Blue Mosque. Amazing.
Next up: days 3 and 4 of Istanbul; New Year's celebrations; and a tremendous evening at the floating cabaret.
*Really, we only barely scratched the surface, and the place just keeps popping up! Just last week, we watched the latest James Bond movie (which starts in Istanbul), then Claire Danes got assigned to Istanbul on Homeland, and we recently attended a concert in which at least 2 of the 6 performers were from Turkey, and in a book I just finished, the main character's grandparents were visiting the city. It's obviously a sign: must go to Istanbul again. (And after that, the rest of Turkey! I hear it's incredible, and we know already that it's full of insanely interesting history and outrageous food...)
** And that was after he'd established that we were willing to pay cash, and cut his originally quoted price by about a third. Who's a hard bargainer? This girl. I'm actually fairly proud of myself, here. Yep...that rug was that expensive, and measured only maybe two feet by three! Although I did remotely (very remotely) consider buying it because it was so, so pretty: made of silk, with the tiniest imaginable knots, eggplant-purple background with a fancied-up Moorish arch framing a fluted urn full of flowers and hanging grasses, with blue-and-gold twisted columns on either side of the arch and an ornate border of woven flowers around the whole thing. Sigh. Still want, and still wouldn't pony up that much money for it.
***Although can you imagine the kokoreç black market? Instead of knock-off handbags on a blanket on the sidewalk, or "Rolexes" from some guy's trench coat in an alley, it'd be tripe sandwiches. And we bought ours in an alleyway anyway, so I suppose it wouldn't be so different, but still. That's the kind of illicit trade I could support.
****Our return trip took us a second time through the most impoverished neighborhood I've ever seen, full of vacant/dilapidated buildings, empty lots full of all sorts of debris, vendors hawking all manner of goods (second-hand and otherwise) on blankets on the sidewalks (where there were sidewalks), and places where it actually looked like a bomb had gone off--and immediately down the hill from the shining, heavily touristed, Suleymaniye mosque, no less! We were absolutely obvious there, but at no point in time did we feel threatened...just the subject of some curious glances. I really wasn't sure what to think or how to feel...I just know I've never been anywhere like that at all.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.