Turkey stuffing

Turkey has been a bit of an eye-opener for us.  It has always been on my list purely because of Gallipoli but of course there is so much more to it.

Istanbul was fabulous.  What a great city!  It’s vibrant and colourful and kind of European, kind of Middle Eastern.  The people are possibly the friendliest we’ve encountered on our travels.

Instead of hassling us, the shop vendors plyed us with freebies.  From our hostel, we walked past all the al fresco restaurants looking for a reasonable kebab.  Of course, they all met us out front and tried to woo us into their establishment, as we’ve experienced before – only this time it was “try my meatballs” or  “Oh Madame!  You must try our chicken!  It is the best around!”

We almost didn’t have to sit down to eat because we had been given so many pieces of meat and various other bits, we were nearly full!  The restaurant we chose, did give us a delicious lamb meal but then insisted that we try his apple dessert, followed by hot apple tea in those tiny Turkish glass cups – on the house.

We rolled down the hill towards the Bosphorus, completely stuffed but stopped to look in the window of a Bacalavaci (ie Turkish sweet & dessert shop).  The windows were full of displays of Turkish delight.  The shopkeeper came out to meet us and insisted we try some varieties of Turkish delight.  So we stuffed some more in – and it was divine.

Next door was an ice cream shop and outside a costumed man was beating “dondurma” (Turkish ice cream) with a big spoon with a long handle.  Dondurma is really different from our ice cream.  It’s kind of thick and stretchy and tastes a bit like gelato.  We stopped to take a photo of the man doing his thing but of course he insisted we try his wares and Michael walked away with a free cone!

We had to get away from all this food, so walked the rest of the way down to the Bosphorus to look at the amazing view and then walked across the Galati Bridge to Asia on the other side of the water. 

The top of the bridge was full of fisherman and men selling grilled fish.  Under the bridge is jammed with fish restaurants.  The whole place was rocking!

Unfortunately on the other side of the bridge, was a whole group of street vendors selling fruit, nuts, bagels and drinks.  After a handful of cherries was given to us, we decided any more free food was going to be messy so we stumbled home to bed and a packet of antacids..