Day 9 – Istanbul, Turkey (May 22, 2023)
The Beyond wasn’t scheduled to leave Istanbul until 1 pm today so after breakfast we wandered off the ship and walked back to the Tom Tom Suites where we had dinner at Nicole’s the night before. Polat had pointed out that if we went up the stairs at the end of the alley, we would end up on the biggest street in Istanbul so we decided to check it out. It was a good bit of a climb up but the alley opened up onto a large commercial street where we found restaurants, a whole bunch of different kinds of baklava, “Turkish Delight”, spices, tea, clothing shops, etc. We picked up an Istanbul magnet and when I went to go and pay for it, I was practicing the Turkish phrase for “thank you” in my head but the guy I bought the magnet from just couldn’t be bothered and begrudgingly made change for me so I skipped the pleasantries. We also picked up some sweet ground red chili flakes, “ottoman” seasoning, a couple of boxes of baklava – one for us and one for the Teskes. We ended up getting baklava at Hafiz Mustafa who has been making baklava since 1864 – we saw a bunch of people walking around with the red Hafiz Mustafa bags so we figured it was probably pretty good. It was like choosing different flavors of donuts at Dunkin Donuts. Just about every port we visited, there were cats running around outdoors. I didn’t get the impression there was any sort of Animal Control. The cats seemed friendly enough - begging for food every time we sat down to eat but the locals support them by putting out food, water, and even little cat houses.
I worked on my computer for a bit while sipping on a coffee cocktail at Cafe al Bacio then took a shower and met everyone at Luminae for dinner at 6 pm. We had dinner with Perter and Joyce Lehany – it was wonderful to catch up with them. Wade ordered a bottle of Krug champagne and we toasted Charlie. I had the Daniel Boulud signature dishes – the chilled corn soup, duck leg confit “char sui”, and the mild chocolate pill. It was all really good. During dinner, the ship passed under a bridge which was kind of cool to watch from inside the dining room.
No comments:
Post a Comment