The Bosphorus and the Aegean

Hi everyone from Greece!
We’ve been here a week now, and we’re loving it - but first, Istanbul.

Istanbul is such a huge and diverse city, one week was not near enough to get a handle on it. And even if we were only there for one week, we experienced so much that one blog is not near enough to sum it all up. Instead of trying that impossible task, I’m going to write here a few excerpts from our travel journal to try and give our dear readership an idea of what it was like.
• Adana Kebab – spicy lamb with bulgur and onion (tossed in sumac!)
• Fresh grilled fish on bread with pickles + pickled cabbage, served to us by guys running around yelling, cooked for us on a docked boat rocking in the wake of passing ferries.
• Sarkici = singer (like the girls we saw singing in the park)
• “To be able to see the Bosphorus, even from afar – for Istanbullus this is a matter of spiritual import that may explain why windows looking out on to the sea are like the mirhabs in mosques...” – Orhan Pamuk
• 1st things 1st : a good filter coffee @ Coffee Manifesto
• Dolmus travel totally reminds me of Colombia. Rippin around through the busy streets in a crowded little van, passing our money up to the driver, feeling pretty much like a local.
• ...GIANT Turkish breakfast (Kahvaltī) How giant? 22 distinct food items + unlimited çay. All with a sea view, and live entertainment from the balikçilar.
• Layers of history are really apparent here, including the present. This means guys washing their feet for prayers in ancient fountains beside tourists putting rented skirts on over their yoga pants, and modern restoration over mosque-ification of a twice rebuilt ancient church constructed with relics from even more ancient buildings from previous civilisations. Beautiful, thought provoking, and too much to take in in one go.
• This is tomato sauce, but what’s really important is the guy who comes around and pours melted butter over your döner and pide.
• The sultan had a whole pavilion to store his turbans.
• Roasted lamb intestine with spicy tomato sauce on toasted bread. “Don’t think too hard.”
• The washer: squirts water at a perfect angle....

A big thank you to our amazing tour guide Lisa, without whom our experience would have been much different and not nearly as rich.

From Istanbul we flew to Athens, our stopover before starting on the olive farm. When choosing a city to be a stopover, Athens is probably the very worst choice. Oh yeah, we said, I guess the Parthenon is here! And the Olympian Temple of Zeus! And Hadrian’s Gate! And 10 000 other very significant archaeological sites! And the food is so good and so cheap! We’re gonna need a bit of time... Not to mention the demonstrations taking place while we were there, blocking our access to parts of the city, an actual quote from a waitress: “There is a bank machine that way, but oh that’s too dangerous. Can you pay with card?” We did manage to make the most of the few days we were there, and see some really interesting stuff, and eat some really great food.

Tune in next time to hear about our experience picking olives and drinking straight glasses of fresh oil...

-Harry