Turkish Delight

Arriving at 5 am to an unknown city is great.  Walking around as shops open and businessmen get their breakfast sandwiches and the smell of warm bread makes you feel a part of the city.  That is until you realize that among the few thousand people you have seen get of the train you are the only one wearing shorts.  I couldn’t believe that in such a progressive country, men couldn’t wear shorts in the city!  After a quick change I asked at the front desk for a map.  I didn’t have Turkish Lyra to pay for it, so he just let me have the map and told me to pay for it later (he didn’t actually know my room number or name yet).  We went to one of the first of what would be the best restaurants in all of our travels in the morning for something like a potato knish.  A bread wrapped, warm potato filled pastry.  And then we began our tour.  2000 years of history laid strewn across a very small section of beautiful city. 

   People were friendly everywhere, although it did take us 25 minutes and 5 people to find the office of our tour company even though we were within one block and had an address J  Two of those people were police officers, one of whom waved a hand at us to dismiss us and the other was an off-duty young cop who apologized for the other police officer by explaining that he didn’t know any English.  The cop was very happy to help but wanted to make sure that in our brief conversation we knew that “We [Turkish people] like Americans very much, just not your government.”

Below is an 1800 year old pillar from Roman times describing how the Emporor brought the obelisk above the carving to the city.

  Food was delicious and plentiful, but even the dozens of baklava stores could not compare to the quantity of shopping that could be had in Istanbul.  We met a few Kenyans who had come to Istanbul JUST to shop (at one point their bags of purchases actually blocked our entry into the main door of our hotel).  Turkey is land ripe with history and a welcoming and unique culture.  Also, if you have been in countries that do not like bread for two months, then Turkey should also be called the Land of Bread and More Bread because delicious bread was to be found everywhere, even delivered fresh to your house by placing a bag of bread on your doorhandle.  Yum!