We started the day with a traditional Turkish breakfast that we have been feasting on almost every morning: bread, cheese, cucumber, tomatoes, egg, and pastry. The food has been fabulous. When we have a full meal, there is generally a salad (lettuce, tomato, cucumber, lemon/oil dressing), sometimes a lentil soup, sometimes a meze (appetizer, usually vegetable like eggplant or pepper), and a meat dish. We have had fish (sea bass and calamari on the boat especially awesome), chicken (kebab or casserole), lamb (same), mince meat (as in the "swooning imam" in which it is stuffed in eggplant), and beef. This morning, I tried some of Franz's marmite, which is an Australia/New Zealand tradition (almost the same as Vegemite). It was... yeasty. One taste was plenty. Franz has also been teaching us some handy New Zealand slang: numpty (dummy), jandals (flip flops), dag (person who's a real character, especially when drunk), winging (whining), a crack-up (funny person), stunner (said if you took a good picture), and he taught us how to properly pronounce New Zealand, in case we want to impersonate kiwis.
Allie, Franz, and I departed our hotel (and the ADORABLE westie puppy we kept threatening to take with us) after breakfast, and took the train from Selcuk to Izmir. There, we took a quick flight to Istanbul. After arriving, we said goodbye to our new friend, who leaves for Australia tomorrow.
Allie and I made our way to the trendy Beyoglu area, where we are staying in Istanbul. We next walked to Galata Tower, which has an awesome 360 degree view of the city.
From there, we crossed the Galata Bridge, which transported us to the oldest part of the city.
With some free time, we went to the mosque of suleyman the magnificent, which is enormous and stunning.
We continued to get our bearings by taking a ferry that goes up the Bosphorus Strait, the body of water connecting the Black Sea to the Sea of Marmara and then the Mediterranean. Allie and I laughed about our romantic sunset boat ride together, but seriously it was beautiful.
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