Day 211, Istanbul, Turkey
After a few days of hardcore sightseeing, today we decided to make it a bit more low key. For us that means letting the teen brains sleep until they wake up on their own, having a leisurely lunch, maybe some shopping, more eating, and then returning home for some Netflix. We almost had a party when Netflix announced they were adding a hundred or more countries, because it’s one of our favorite sources of entertainment. Yesterday we couldn’t access it, today we can. Sprint also added more countries to it’s free international data plan, which now includes all the countries on our list. With Netflix and data, the kids are happy…and their parents, even happier.
The Galata Tower near our apartment.
We all, except Paul, got shoes or a wallet from a creative designer called Dogo. That will be our souvenir from here. Madison also got a leather jacket.
The food here has been delicious. Our favorite restaurant has a buffet at lunch, which is great, because you can see the food, point at it, they serve it up. We tried their baklava, which tastes so very different than when I had it in North
America. On the streets there are red carts which sell round circle pretzels with sesame seeds on top, roasted chestnuts, or cronuts (churros in the shape of doughnuts). Each option is extremely popular, people buy them on the streets in the red carts, and eat them on the go.
My favorite part of Turkey is the tea culture. When you buy things at the store, they often ask if you would like tea. At the Grand Bazaar they have runners, you text your order, and they bring it on a tray a few minutes later. In another store that Paul and Madi went to the owner talked into an old intercom on the wall, asked for tea and it showed up a few minutes later. Paul asked how often they have tea in a day and the man replied, between 8 to 10 times a day.
We opted for some pizza take-away from a place that had a wood-burning oven. They do their pizzas here in elongated shapes, which we called pizza boats. The boats are heavy heavy on the cheese. Pizza and a movie night was a good way finish a downtime day.