The city of istanbul.. - Cherieladie;

Am gonna skip talking about rome & paris first (thats 10 days of the trip) and talk about istanbul first for the benefit of kenties who will be popping by next week.

When we first got into istanbul, it was dry and hot, which was a stark difference from paris where we were freezing our arses off. The streets are quite typical of most cities and strangely, it felt like i was in an asian country instead.

They had many tall buildings that resembled our hdb flats (but not as tall but with nice looking exterior), so i couldnt help resist asking the taxi driver if these were apartments that people stay in. Well, turns out their living quarters are similar to ours but their apartments cost 1 million each (about s$900k). The thing that i dont know about is whether their houses are huge compared to our tiny flats, and apparently they have lower standard living quarters for those who cannot afford the apartments but i didnt have a chance to see how they looked like.

It was hard conversing with the driver as well, since he dont speak english as fluently as i’ll like him to be.

We stayed in the sultanhamet area which was where all the big mosques were and where most of the touristy places were within walking distance.

I didnt have any pictures in my phone on the city landscape, think i was too sick to be whipping out my phone to take pictures.

We popped by a restaurant just beside our hotel (we stayed in hotel ipek palas eminonu) for a simple dinner before we retired to our rooms for some rest and fun with our phones. I finished my book in paris and couldn’t find an english book to buy so had to entertain myself with the phone.

Tomato soup with a generous amount of cheese (which turned me off cos the cheese was very strong smelling).

Im not a kebab lover so i opted for pasta which came looking and tasting like our fried noodles. And it was rather bland and i couldn’t even taste any hint of tomato in it. The funny thing was that the mushrooms that they had in the noodles were sour tasting and der was saying it is quite common on this side of the world and its preserved. I had to force myself to some bites and keep myself filled but i really didnt enjoy the food here.

Der’s chicken kebab which he didnt like as well. Both our tastebuds find the spices smell in the food here not appealing so this was the first and the last meal that we had of their cuisine (other than the snacks that we randomly tried on the streets).

We just took a leisurely stroll around the hotel’s vicinity but didnt buy anything since it was mostly ornamental stuff that the shops were selling, or shoes looking like asics or adidas but are not and loads of restaurants and hotels. Guess its really a touristy area!

Oh. And i spotted these cute little cakes in a bakery!