Hey folks. Oscar and I have been in the hot and sweaty Istanbul for four days now, and we've been rushed off our feet seeing the sights and familiarising ourselves with this historical old city. We're staying in an interesting hotel on a fairly quiet street in Sultanahmet, the old part of the city. The big tourist attractions Aya Sofya and the Blue Mosque are a short walk away from here, so obviously we've been to see those already. In fact, we've done quite a bit already. My favourite of all the religious buildings has to be the impressive Blue Mosque, which is covered in tens of thousands of blue isnik tiles, and is just huge and breathtaking inside. I experienced a similar feeling of astonishment in the Taj Mahal. One of the other weird and wonderful places we've been to is the Basilica Cistern, which is an underground structure designed to hold over 80,000 cubic metres of water. It was so lovely and cool in the cave like place, and quite relaxing despite the number of tourists busy snapping pictures of the famous upside down Medusa heads.
Tomorrow, we are going to the Grand Bazaar, which we have wandered through already, but tomorrow we are set to do some serious shopping! Needless to say, I am rather excited, though Oscar might hide his credit card in advance :-( At some point we are also going to cross over to the Asian side of Turkey, so we can say proudly that we were in two continents during one holiday!
The food is nice, once we manage to find something we can eat. At lunchtime, we tend to feast on dips and pides (which is like the Turkish version of a pizza), but it can be pretty tricky to find vegetarian/fish dishes for dinner. There are some fancy restaurants, specialising in Ottoman cuisine, but sadly, this means kebaps or some other meaty feast usually involving the innards of a sheep. Tonight hopefully, I will have some room left in my belly to eat some baklava, which shockingly, we have not sampled yet! Don't worry, I will get my fill of it before we leave, especially when tomorrow, we go to a restaurant built above a pretty good baklava shop :-D
Tomorrow, we are going to the Grand Bazaar, which we have wandered through already, but tomorrow we are set to do some serious shopping! Needless to say, I am rather excited, though Oscar might hide his credit card in advance :-( At some point we are also going to cross over to the Asian side of Turkey, so we can say proudly that we were in two continents during one holiday!
The food is nice, once we manage to find something we can eat. At lunchtime, we tend to feast on dips and pides (which is like the Turkish version of a pizza), but it can be pretty tricky to find vegetarian/fish dishes for dinner. There are some fancy restaurants, specialising in Ottoman cuisine, but sadly, this means kebaps or some other meaty feast usually involving the innards of a sheep. Tonight hopefully, I will have some room left in my belly to eat some baklava, which shockingly, we have not sampled yet! Don't worry, I will get my fill of it before we leave, especially when tomorrow, we go to a restaurant built above a pretty good baklava shop :-D
