Istanbul - Day 2

The Blue Mosque

Our second day in Istanbul was jam-packed!  We woke up early to grab breakfast on the rooftop terrace of our hostel and then headed out to see the sights.  Our first stop was the Blue Mosque, which had been unfortunately closed for prayer when we stopped by the day before.  The inside of the Blue Mosque is just unbelievable.  I ardently believe that it is the most beautiful and magnificent building in the world, inside and out.  The intricacy of the artwork and tiles inside is just unbelievable.

Then we spent the morning walking around the Grand Bazaar and the Egyptian Spice Market.  I told Kati that if there was one place on this trip that she would undoubtedly fall in love with, it was the Grand Bazaar. (I was right)  Despite the craziness of the Grand Bazaar, I think that the Egyptian Spice Market is even cooler.  You just walk down the aisles of shops and there are barrels of spices (More saffron than you could use in your life), tea, and Turkish Delight.  Afterwards we made a quick walk across the Galata Bridge and I showed Kati where all of my previous shenanigans with the Ankaran shoe shiners happened last time I was in Istanbul, but that's definitely a story for another time that must be coupled with a lot of Raki.

Egyptian Spice Market

Our afternoon was spent at the Topkapi Palace, where the sultans of the Ottoman Empire lived.  The palace itself is gigantic and really cool.  However, the outrageous price to go in (and other fees inside) coupled with the unbearable crowds made it one of my least favorite places we'd been in the city.  Until now, I didn't realize how spoiled I was the last time I came, in November, because there weren't any tourists at all!

The evening was one of the best parts of the whole day.  We had heard about this Dutch ex-pat who opened an Anatolian cuisine restaurant right near our hostel.  She's a classically-trained chef from Cordon Bleu and serves a fixed four-course meal every night.  We tried to go the night before, but her restaurant only has 22 seats and she only does one sitting, which books up very quickly.  The food was amazing!  Our first course was a red pepper and lentil soup, with a nice kick, followed by an eggplant stuffed with all sorts of vegetables.  I was really skeptical about the eggplant going in, but somehow she managed to eliminate the bitterness of the "blue tomato" and I actually enjoyed the dish.  The main course consisted of meat fingers (lamb and veal) wrapped in vine leaves coupled with yogurt and was absolutely delicious.  Finally, she couldn't decide on a dessert, so she gave us two: a fig stuffed with candied walnuts and some sort of pudding with roasted nuts in it.  While we had planned to get a Turkish massage after dinner, both of us were too stuffed to even think about it, so we went to grab an apple tea and headed back to the hostel instead.  It was a fantastic day!

Today (August 10) we leave for Cappadocia.  We decided to book a two-day tour of Cappadocia to eliminate the stress of planning the logistics and to get rid of one of our longest bus trips.  We're flying from Istanbul to Cappadocia this evening around 6:00.  The travel agency is taking care of everything from getting us to the airport, to our hotel, to transportation and tours for two days, and most of our meals.  It's going to be fantastic.  From there we'll move on to the southern coast of Turkey and slowly work our way back up to Istanbul.