Dinner -- a grand food finale

Here's the final installment of my food porn from Turkey. Represented below is a sampling of a whole bunch of meals over the course of our trip -- some my food and some for other people. The thing I like best about Turkish cooking, which shares some with Greek, Spanish and other Mediterranean cuisines, is that it is fairly uncorrupted food -- minimally processed, with (at least in the western part of the country) an emphasis on olive oil, fish, fruits, vegetables, herbs and seasonings.

One of my favorites things, after hot, dusty days on my feet, was to sit down in a restaurant and immediately be served fresh cucumber sticks with a dill and yogurt dip. It's such a simple combination, but so cool and refreshing! The practice of doubling up on the starches/carbs (fries AND rice? really?) is something I haven't ever seen before, but I was happy to go with the flow.

Snacking and other pleasures

I didn't get to sample much of the snack food in Turkey (a person can only eat a limited number of times in a day!), but I sure enjoyed looking. Toward the end of the week, I did try some of the street corn, and it was really quite delicious, though it was a trick to convince the guy to leave off the generous serving of salt all the other cobs were getting...

Lunchtime

Oy, but I was wishing for that buffet (see yesterday's post) at breakfast time this morning. I was so disheartened by the options I actually had available in my kitchen that I didn't bother eating at all and now I'm really, really hungry. This next round of pictures is going to be torture (I'm meeting a friend for lunch, so I won't get to eat for a while yet).

We found quite a few eateries in Turkey where lunch was treated as an art form -- with as much attention paid to presentation as to creating delicious and savory food. While it was hard to stick to small meals (when it's hot and we're doing a lot of hiking and climbing, I don't want a lot of food on my stomach), I was happy to find that it was pretty easy to keep to eating light during the day because of all the fruits and veggies that were served with pretty much every meal. (It was sometimes tough, though, getting pictures of the dishes while they were still untouched...)

More food (breakfast!)

So, there's a food theme that's materializing this week, so I'm going to go with the flow and put up something that's long overdue: photos of the food from last summer's trip to Turkey. I'll start with breakfast... Brace yourself -- whatever you find on the table in the morning is going to be a disappointment after looking at this buffet...

Istanbul Museum of Turkish and Islamic Arts

(Can you believe I still have photos left from my trip to Turkey?)

What do you put in an art museum when your culture spent years discouraging the creation of representational art?

Well, you fill it with metallurgy...

...calligraphy...

...rugs...

textiles...

... and other fashions.

Wordless Wednesday

Wordless Wednesday

Turkey Travelogue: Sokollu Mehmet Paşa Mosque

This was my favorite mosque of the trip (and the last one in my travelogue). We swung through on a (relatively) mellow day when we were wandering around over near the Marmara. It is a small, lesser-known mosque, so it was not crowded with tourists -- in fact the only person there when we arrived was a man who was sweeping the place -- but it was still breathtakingly gorgeous.

Built in 1571-1572, it was commissioned by Sokollu Mehmet Paşa and designed by Sinan. It is covered in the same İznick tiles found at the Blue Mosque, but is a much smaller building, set on a steep, sloping site.

The exterior of the mosque is of very plain stone, so you don't realize how grand the interior will be until you actually step inside. There is also a lovely, modest graveyard adjacent to the building.

All of the mosques have taps somewhere on the outside, for ritual ablutions that conclude with the washing of the feet. The Mehmet had its circle of taps in a small secluded courtyard at the top of a steep entrance stairway. It was all a very charming setting that provided for a refreshing break from the heat and noise down on the street.

Turkey Travelogue: The Blue Mosque

The Blue Mosque was built by Ahmed I between 1609 and 1616. It was supposed to be a positive distraction during declining fortunes in the Ottoman Empire, but a lot of his subjects were a bit upset by the project -- both by the fact that Ahmed looted the treasury to finance the construction and by what was considered to be a sacrilegious inclusion of six minarets in the plans (only a architecture in Mecca should be so grand!).

Visiting the mosque requires a proper respect for the space, so believe it or not, yours truly actually put on a skirt for the occasion! Yes, people -- I do have legs (well, ankles, anyway -- I wore an appropriately modest and long, though gauzy, skirt -- think dead show circa 1985)! ;-D

To the right in this photo you can see a bit of the royal loge, and behind that is the mihrab, which indicates the proper direction to face when praying, so as to be oriented toward Mecca.

The mosque takes its name from the blue İznick tiles used extensively throughout the interior. It was breathtaking to see, and we were fortunate to be there between prayer times, so that we had the time and space to wander about a bit while we tried to take it all in.

Turkey Travelogue: Hippodrome

Back to Turkey. I'm going to pick things up with the Hippodrome, which at one time was the social and sporting center of Constantinople. It was also the scene of the tragic Nika Riots, where tens of thousands of people were killed in the aftermath of an explosion of gang violence. Not too much of the Hippodrome is left anymore, but we were able to walk around the now-paved path where the horses and chariots used to race. The rest of the area is a garden, with the surviving adornments situated at either end and in the center.

The middle of the Hippodrome (the spina) was adorned with columns and obelisks. This first one (above and below) is the Egyptian Obelisk and dates back to 1500 BC. The base, made in the 4th century, depicts a chariot race on its four sides and features Theodosius I and his family. The obelisk is the top section of a monument that was probably two or three times the height of the surviving piece.

Next is the Serpentine Column, which came from Delphi. There used to be heads on the serpents, until the 18th century, when a drunken Polish nobleman knocked them off.

And lastly there's the column known both for Porphyrogenitus Constantine, who restored it in the 10th century, and as the Brazen Column, because it was once covered in bronze. Members of the Janissary corp were known for scaling it as part of same sort of silly pissing contests that still entertain men to this day.

Friday Creature

For the first time ever, I am at a loss when it comes to a Friday Creature. I've got nothing. So, with apologies to the Modulator, I'm going maverick! For the first friday of the year, I bring you these former creatures, photographed at a seafood market in Istanbul last summer.

Bonus Wednesday

Here's another Wednesday photo, but this one is not going to be wordless. It serves instead as my announcement that I'll be returning to my Turkey photos this week. I never did get all the way through my travelogue this summer, so I'll be finishing it up in these last few days of the holiday season.

This photo was snapped while wandering around a neighborhood in Istanbul, after having a lunch overlooking the nearby Sea of Marmara.

I'll have some more pictures around Istanbul in the next few days, and then I'll wind things up with a grand finale of food porn. Stay tuned...

Turkey Travelogue: Basilica Cistern

When I was a kid, there was a cistern room in the basement of my turn-of-the-century home. At one time, it was used to hold rainwater, but someone had long ago knocked a hole through the cistern wall to make a door, so that the space could be used as a room. I always thought it was a pretty cool feature of the house, and I don't think I've encountered another underground cistern since then -- until this summer, when I got to visit a most breathtaking water storage system: the Basilica Cistern (later known as Yerebatan Sarayı to the Ottomans), which was originally built under Constantinople by Emperor Justinian. He added the Cistern after the Nika riots because at the time, the city sometimes suffered from droughts during the summer.

Wordless Wednesday

Wordless Wednesday

Turkey Travelogue: the Bosporus

After visiting Topkapı Palace in the morning on a national holiday, we realized that if we wanted to get away from the huge crowds, we really needed to get out of the city. But we also didn't want to waste any precious time in Istanbul. The next best thing to getting out of town, we figured, was to get out on the water. So we found a boat, and spent the afternoon riding up and down the Bosporus, seeing the city from the sea (note: the following picture is not our vessel -- we chartered a tourist craft at Eminönü, but there were plenty of pleasure boats out on the strait on that gorgeous sunny day).

Wordless Wednesday

Wordless Wednesday

Turkey Travelogue: The Spice Bazaar

Istanbul's Spice Bazaar is a huge covered shopping area not too far from the Golden Horn (harbor). It was built in the 17th century and has been in continuous use since.

Its name, Mısır Çarşısı -- which means "Egyptian Bazaar" -- comes from the fact that it was built using money paid as a duty on Egyption imports. The modern market carries everything from spices, herbs, nuts, meats and other foods, to toys, clothes, plants and pets.

Turkey Travelogue: Topkapı Palace

In France, it was Versailles. Italy has the Vatican. If I sat here and thought about it long enough, I'm sure I could come up with plenty of other examples... But the point is that these are the places that have become so overrun with tourists that it's hard to see the scenery past all the people.

The Vatican was the worst -- after standing in a long, hot, sticky line, and tramping through all kinds of crowded halls and passages, there I was -- finally! -- standing in the Sistine Chapel, under that beautiful work of art, and all I could think was "ohmygod, get me out of this sardine can!"

Versailles comes in a close second -- or perhaps it isn't quite that bad, but only suffers from the contrast provided by my memory of visiting that beautiful palace with my parents when I was in high school, when, for a few moments, we were actually all alone in the Hall of Mirrors. Back in the day. But times have changed -- the last time I was there, it was wall-to-wall people every step of the way.

Anyway, Topkapı, quite the gorgeous palace, was the same way when we visited. I doubt it's always that crowded, the day we were there was a national holiday in Turkey and admission to all the big attractions was free to everyone. So it was really crowded. Which is a long way around to saying that I didn't get very many photos of the palace. I got a lot of photos of people, which I hope to share at some point, but the pickings are slim when it comes to the scenery.

Topkapı was built by Mehmet II between 1459 and 1465, and was the official residence of sultans until 1853. It's been a museum since 1924. This first picture is the Imperial Hall.

Wordless Wednesday

Wordless Wednesday

Turkey Travelogue: Hagia Sophia

Belatedly getting back to my trip... our first big stop in Istanbul was Hagia Sophia, the Church of Holy Wisdom. This 6th-century Byzantine architectural marvel sits in Sultanahmet Square (those fountains are in the Square), facing the Blue Mosque.

Wordless Wednesday

Wordless Wednesday