Tuesday, May 20 : Asia

So today I traveled to a different continent! We met Prof. Shields on the terrace this morning and then walked down to the waterfront (of the Golden Horn) and got our okbil. Okbil, which is short for "intelligent card" are kind of like flex passes - they allow you to use public transportation in Turkey. Except they look really cool - they are plastic with a magnetic circle on them and they come in all different colors (mine is orange). Then we got to use our okbil and got on the ferry at Karakoy to go to Kadikoy on the Asian side. No, that is not a typo - the place we leave from is two letters different from the place we are trying to get to. Just in case it wasn't confusing enough, the Turkish 'r' is pronounced similar to the 'd.' Thanks.

The ferry ride was awesome. It was cool to see all the monuments from a completely different angle. The waters of the Bosphorous, although I'm told they are dirty from the huge amounts of ships that sit in its waters waiting to go through the strait, is beautiful, almost Caribbean. They are chock-full of jellyfish too! They served Turkish tea on the ferry and it was only 0.5 lira, which is about 42 cents.

The Asian side of Istanbul is very different from the European side, at least to me. It's more urban, less touristy, and A LOT more crowded. We went up this street that was sort of like an open air market street - it had fishmongers, pastry shops, vegetable sellers, doner, and other little cafes. In one of the dessert shops they had these little geese that I think were made out of meringues - I wonder if it had anything to do with the goose that apparently lives on the street. One of the fishmongers had a large bucket with little baitfish in it and one of the many stray Istanbul cats was sitting stock-still, looking at the fish with more than a little interest. I'm still sad I didn't get a picture. It's so interesting to me that literally everything is sold in a market-like atmosphere - even cat food was being sold per scoop out of huge bags in some of the stands.

Then we went to a HUGE market that is only there on Tuesdays and Fridays. We really had to fight our way through the crowd - there were so many people in such a small walking area. The first part we walked through was selling mainly clothing and shoes - REALLY CHEAP. Then we got to the food market, which was much less crowded and what I really wanted to buy. There were so many vegetable and fruit vendors, and they were all pretty much selling the same things - cherries, erik (sour green plums), apricots, strawberries, apples, some sort of berry-looking things, peas still in the pod, cucumbers, tomatoes, artichoke hearts floating in some sort of liquid (water?), and a lot of other fruits and vegetables that I can't remember. I bought some garlic and tomatoes for cooking tonight and then we went to a cafe and had an Efes. Now I can say that I had a beer in Asia! a vendor who was selling shoes and sunglasses

toasting to Asia with Efes

After riding the ferry back over to Europe, I started cooking up some friste - pasta with lentils, tomatoes, garlic and red peppers. The boys decorated our terrace with a whole bunch of candles that we had collectively between the two flats - who knew they were so artistic/romantic? They also brought up a bottle of "wine" that was left in their flat. It turned out to be cooking wine - blech. Lets just say that Edward mixed it with Coke by accident but then declared that it actually tasted better. The friste was ok, but not great - I'm sure I will whip up some better dishes while we're here! We had so much fun at dinner, though, that I think we will continue to have a lot of group meals up there. Although we missed Yekta - she was with her grandparents over in Asia. Tomorrow - a scavenger hunt!