Ahhh! It has been a crazy few weeks and I have been super bad about updating the blog! Fortunately, things have calmed down now and we are in the small town of Kamari on Santorini which has all but closed for the winter, so we have fewer distractions and plenty of time!
We landed on Istanbul completely unaware that the night before riots had broken out in the streets. Istanbul is about as far away from the Syrian border as you can get in Turkey (half of it is on a completely different continent for goodness sake!) and we felt safe going there, even with all the trouble with ISIS along the border. So we were completely taken back when we heard that there were riots going on in Istanbul. We grew more concerned as we learned that the common area for protesting was Taksim square, the area of Istanbul we were staying in!!
But, we didn’t know any of that when we landed after our short flight from Malta. All we knew was that we were meeting my mom! She had flown in from Denver a few hours earlier and I was super excited to see her. The airport was a little confusing, there were several lines- some for countries whose citizens needed visas, some for countries whose citizens did not, a general line for arrivals and a line for Turkish citizens. We had purchased visas online but were unclear about whether or not we needed to go through the line for countries needing visas or if we could proceed to the general arrivals line. Eventually we navigated our way through the airport and met up with mom. We found a bus going to Taksim square and we were off! As we drove through the city, we could tell that Istanbul was unlike any place any of us had ever been. Beautiful mosques rose up in every direction, their delicate minarets reaching skyward all around us. Amazing, old buildings, many older than I can actually wrap my mind around blended seamlessly on the streets with neon signs. And, it was crowded. Very crowded.
Our arrival in Taksim square alerted us to the seriousness of the riots as we encountered riot police decked out in riot gear, helmets and shields. Fortunately, they were not using it at this point and the mood was relaxed, guards smiled and chatted. A few days later, it was a different story as we walked home, down Istiklal street towards Taksim Square. We were walking and chatting about our day and we suddenly became very aware of a shift in the mood on the street. We found ourselves walking in a group of grim-faced men and saw the riot police organizing nearby, no longer smiling and chatting, they were huddled close, shields facing out and they were putting on their gas masks. We immediately removed ourselves from the group and went over to the other side of the street, with the other tourists and non-confrontational people. We were only a few blocks from home, but the mood was so tense that we felt uncomfortable walking through these streets. My mom and I turned to Nick, “can you get us home a different way?” After studying his map he said he could and off we went. Taksim Square is on a very hilly part of the city and we spent most of our time walking up or down hills as we explored the city. We had, on several occasions, passed stairs that seemed to go on forever and tried our best to avoid the endless stairs as we walked. This particular day, however, in order to avoid the tense situation on our street we found ourselves walking up one of these mega staircases. Luckily, this proved to be our biggest issue as we made it home without further incident and without running into any riots!
This was the only incident we had, the rest of our time in Istanbul was peaceful and incredibly inspiring. We wandered down from our apartment in Taksim square to the old part of the city, crossing the Galata Bridge to do so. The Galata bridge is very long and very wide and all along both sides are fishermen, fishing in the Bosphorus. Our first trip over the bridge, we were very surprised by this, and even more surprised as a fish jumped out of a styrofoam container and starting flopping on the sidewalk. It flopped for a few seconds before a couple walked past, the man reaching down and flipping the fish back into the container. The couple them continued on their way, the woman making a big show of not holding the mans fishy hand anymore until he wiped it on his pants. A little later on the bridge, we almost had to duck as a man reeled in a fish and swung his line back over the sidewalk on the bridge, narrowly missing the heads of several pedestrians. It was a crazy sight! At the end of the bridge, we came to the spice market. I am almost at a loss of words for the spice market. It was absolutely amazing. Over 300 years old, the L shaped market was an intensely sensory experience- with sights, smells, tastes and sounds hitting us from every direction. As expected, there were tons of spices and spice blends piled high in the stores and spilling out into the walkway, but it didn’t stop with spices. There were dried vegetables hanging in garlands around the stands, dried fruits and garlands of dried fruit leathers, nuts in baskets and Turkish delight everywhere. There were stalls selling fresh fish, aged cheese, and Turkish coffee. Everywhere, vendors were trying to pull customers into their stalls, offering samples or yelling to each other over the cacophony. Occasionally, someone would walk past us with a tray, delivering tea or coffee to customers or merchants throughout the spice market. It was completely overwhelming and utterly amazing!! We walked through the spice market, enjoying it for what it was, but got a better sense of it a few days later when we joined a tour of the market.
Originally, we were supposed to meet with a woman named Seline who would take us to a stall in the spice market where we would meet with a family who had been selling spices in the market for 5 generations. From there, we would learn about the spices, try a few and then go to cooking class at Seline’s house. However, it did not work out quite as planned, but I think it turned out a little better. We found a group outside the market, who we assumed were part of our cooking class. The lady looked puzzled when we joined them and said we were not part of her tour. She called her boss (Seline) to see if she knew anything about it- it seems as though Seline had forgotten about us! She blamed technology, saying her computer had not saved our reservations… Hmmmm. So she sent us with this other tour, while not as intimate, we did get a much more thorough tour of the entire spice market. We got to sample cheeses and olives (my mom sampled my olives so you will have to ask her if they were any good). We tried Turkish delight, which tasted to me like flavored marshmallows with nuts or fruit in them, we tried a traditional Turkish breakfast pizza, baklava with only one layer of filo dough and tons of pistachios and drank fresh pressed orange and pomegranate juice. Our final stop was the spice stand where we met a young lady whose family had been running the spice stand for 4 generations before her. She had studied in the US and was quite charming and informative. She served us tea and gave us samples of several spice blends and tea blends, including an apple tea whose dregs could be used to make apple pie! We tried this later- not Apple pie exactly, but we did wrap it in filo dough and bake until it was GBD! Finally, we made our way across the water on a ferry to the Asian side of Istanbul to meet Seline and take our cooking class. Seline took us to her home, filling us in on Turkish Cuisine while we drove to her house and how similar it is to Greek cuisine, both being heavily influenced by the Ottomans, although, she claimed, the Greeks used much more olive oil. Her kitchen was beautifully set up for us and for several hours we happily pretended to cook (we occasionally chopped a few vegetables, cracked eggs or stirred together pre-measured ingredients, but for the most part her sous chef did all the real work). It was great fun and the food was amazing, although we all agreed that it would be almost impossible to use more olive oil then she did. The highlights of our meal were the tomato/roasted red pepper spread, an amazing carrot salad with yogurt, garlic and tahini and these tasty little borek which we stuffed with feta and fresh herbs, folded like flags (or, paper footballs as Nick pointed out) and fried in, what else, olive oil. Despite being forgotten about, it actually ended up being a wonderful day, with tons of amazing food, a great tour and tons of cool knowledge about spices and Turkish foods (did you know they invented yogurt? Ant eggs + milk + storage under a saddle= the original yogurt!)
More about Istanbul to come…
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