Turkey Pictures

All of these pictures are from Istanbul, which we loved. This first shot is of a lamp store. Although there were dozens of these, they never ceased to take my breath away. We priced a few of them, but figured that they would probably break in transit (and we'd find it cheaper at Cost Plus World Market anyway)!

Years ago I was convinced I wanted to fill a china hutch with dozens of beautiful, handpainted dishes from around the world. That lasted for as long as it took me to realize that the Asian dishes that we find here in the states are often just as pretty, less expensive, and don't need to be handcarried back. Even though I'm already tired of the dishes that we do have, I still get nostalgic for certain pieces like these. They're so vibrant, and many of them had Arabic script on them that was just beautiful.

I wish I had the time, patience and interest to cook from scratch. Though I don't, it was still fun to walk around the Spice Bazaar. It brought back warm memories of similar markets we saw in Cairo two years ago.

Ahhh...every country has their sinful desserts, and the Turkish Delight (lokum) was no exception! We bought back seven boxes of the stuff for friends (our favorite was the pistacchio with shredded coconut)!

One night we were too lazy to talk into town for dinner (it was a good, gosh...three hundred yards away) so we decided to eat at our hotel instead. Because our hotel was the former mansion of a prominent Ottoman from the 16th centiry, the well-preserved kitchen was located downstairs and looked very much like a dungeon (made entirely of stone, dark and cave-like). However, we did not expect that we would be the *only* guests there that night (kind-a eerie), and that our poor waiter (a deer in headlights) spoke almost no English.

When we asked what our first course (soup) would be, he said, "Umm, I don't know." When we asked if it had vegetables or meat (I wanted to make sure I was not eating sheep or goat), he said "Ummm....not vegetable. Not meat. But good. You like." Ahh, sounds great!