Baby girl was tired and Josh was willing to nap along with her so the boys and I headed out in search of lunch today. There is a large green space near our hotel that stretches between the Blue Mosque and the Hagia Sophia. There are always people relaxing on the grass, picnicking and playing there. It’s a cross between a college campus and an outdoor concert venue. Since there are loads of people, there plenty of food vendors with lots to choose from.
We started with the corn guy. He sells boiled or roasted corn for 1 TL (60 cents). He pulls it out of the hot water, sprinkles it with salt, and wraps it in a paper. We got 3 of them and moved on to the simit cart. A simet looks like a circular soft pretzel covered with sesame seeds. It tastes a little bit like a bagel and a little bit like a pretzel. The simit guy also sells these bagel-looking breads that we decided to try today. It was as soft and as sweet as those Hawaiian rolls. Mmmm. We bought 1 of each (2TL total) and took our food and sat under a tree near the fountain to eat.
We chatted and people watched and the boys were jealous of all the little boys who walk around selling bottles of cold water and were trying to figure out how they could make some money too. After we finished our food Carter suggested that we get Turkish candy. I don’t know what it’s really called, but there are these guys with circular trays divided in wedges like a big Trivial Pursuit playing piece and each wedge holds a different color of glossy, stretchy sugar. The way they serve it is to take a stick, pull some sugar out one of the wedges with another stick and begin to wrap the sugar around the first stick. After a few wraps they break the string and do it again with another color, until they’ve got a stick covered with spiral swirls of soft, warm, stretchy candy.
Carter had tried it the day before, but the other two weren’t with us then, so I gave them 3TL ($1.80) and told them to go buy two. It is so sweet I can’t tell if the different colors are different flavors, but Carter swears that they are.
After candy it was time to walk a little. We walked down a street we hadn’t been down before and I found a cute store with all sorts of knit/crocheted hats in the shapes of animals and felted *everything*. Slippers, jewelry, finger puppets, balls — beautiful things all made of yarn, ribbon, or wool. The boys helped me pick out a knit headband with 3 flowers on it (25TL, $15).
Caleb had been wanting a Kinderegg (chocolate egg with a toy inside) and I knew a place to get them, but Carter thought the shop where we bought ice cream bars the other day had them too, so he led the way.
As we have established, I am not the best with directions so I was happy he seemed to know where he was going. As we got closer I recognized the area and was just about to say, “shouldn’t we go left up this street here?” when Carter stopped right in front of the place. :sigh: At least he seems to have inherited the GPS gene.
Once there, the interest in Kindereggs suddenly disappeared and was replaced by a need for ice cream bars (2 bars, 1TL/60 cents). Since that walk had brought us in range of a Starbucks I wanted to get a coffee frap (8.5TL/$5).
Next to Starbucks was a schwarma stand where they have chicken and lamb roasting on a spit and they slice it and roll it in flatbread with lettuce, fried potatoes, and tomatoes. Another food stop — chicken schwarmas to share.
Finally we decided to head back to the hotel and see if everyone was done napping since we had been gone a few hours. One last stop to pick up two Kindereggs (4TL/$2.50) and our mom/son lunch was complete.
