For our last full day in the city, we had two big agenda items, the Blue Mosque and a food tour. We also had just enough time to see the Grand Bazaar although we only spent a little time there, just enough for some Turkish coffee and to not quite get lost.
We made it just in time to see the Blue Mosque before prayer started. The mosque is free and open to visitors except for when prayer is occurring. After a bit of an effort making sure my legs were fully covered, my head and shoulders too, we made our way inside. What a site! Neither of us had ever visited a mosque, so I didn't quite know what to expect. Fully carpeted (gorgeous red!) and glorious blue, white and other colored tile work everywhere. Some people were praying quietly to one side, but it was mostly families and small groups snapping photos of the gorgeous ceiling and walls.
We had the lovely pleasure of taking a food tour from Turkish Flavors. Soon as we decided to go to Istanbul, I knew I wanted to take some kind of cooking class or food tour. Originally, we planned to do a cooking class but that fell through due to not enough people signed-up. We ended up with a Turkish Meyhane (Tavern) tour and it ended up being a private tour at that! Our wonderful host Taciser met us at the spice market where we had a spice tasking (fantastic!), we tried some local sweets and dried fruits and explore the market before taking a short ferry to the Asian side of Istanbul for another market and for dinner.
We ate fried mussels, lamb intestine (surprisingly my favorite thing of the evening -- tasted like ground lamb with spices and herbs - YUM!), a selection of meze, fried sardines, gorgeous spicy shrimp, and some delightful local Raki (anise flavored like Ouzu but not so sweet and more herbal - I thought it was delicious). We compared notes with our host about how to cook certain Mediterranean foods like keftes and dolmas, shared stories about our families and just enjoyed each others companies.
No comments:
Post a Comment