Some.. stuff.

The week, or few weeks or whatever.. in pictures!

Ruth brought food to the bahçe on campus where we frequently hold our informal speaking practice time... and made lots of friends.  Ok, in reality, we all bring food, but she was the only one still eating I think. :D Arent they cuuuute? There are more kittens here then.. well most places..
So, instead of making another food post.. I'm just adding them as I get them.  This is künefe, a desert thats pretty amazing and for some reason the English translation (should there be one) always includes the word 'nosdles'.... I dont know what that means, but anyway, its deliciousss!

Çiya! a fantastic restaurant in Kadıköy (Asian district).  So... we ordered soooo much food, just for Alyssa, Michelle and I.. and it was glorious, but we were really full at the end.  Some of the best food I've ever had though.

So then.. last Saturday, a week ago I suppose.  There was another İstanbul gezi, which again consisted of a million and three historical/beautiful buildings and a guide who filled us so full of architectural knowledge that we, or at least I, went totally numb in the head... Some pics.

See, here we are so attentively listening to him in the mosque :)

I dont remember which mosques any of these are.. but most of my favorite pictures from any gezi are in here... I love this one..

This is my favorite picture ever though, dunno why.  These are people from higher up classes than me..

Ohh, this was soo cool.  I had never seen people making simit before! which is sad, because I eat it 5 days a week.  The dough is rolled into giant cheerios! and covered in sesame seeds, then put on that realllly long board (no seriously, the end of that board was so long that stuck out into the street, under the glass.  They had a cover over the sidewalk for the board to slide under, so it wouldnt trip peoples) and put into the oven.  5 minutes later it comes out (we asked how long it takes) and tastes amazing!  The best part was that the guy just gave us a fresh one from under the glass!

The street, I took this from in front of the simit place. 

Church! Greek Orthodox I think.. or perhaps Armenian.. honestly, I cant remember so many buildings in one day...

One of my favorite pictures, and favorite mosques.

One of the few shots I could get of the street below us without massive Galatasaray flags all in the way.

The gate to İstanbul Üniversitesi, we werent allowed in, since we dont go there I  guess.

I fell asleep on the curb very shortly after taking this picture, how embarrassing, but this is what you get for not going to bed, at all!  Zeynep (one of the directors of the program) was worried about me and held my hand as we walked through the next building ><.  I'm a terrible person.. because I fell asleep twice more before it was all said and done..

Check out that amazing bird house! or bird mosque we figured in the end, see the minarets :)  Apparently there was a period of architecture (here at least) which saw many a fancy birdhouse on the sides of its creations :)

Colorful and pretty :)

The second and third times I fell asleep were in this mosque.  I felt particularly bad because so many people took pictures of me.. but not as bad because at least three other people fell asleep here too.  I'm so awful.. I didnt take pictures of them though

beautiful mosque I think, because of its simplicity compared to all the others we saw.  I found it charming.

Ok, this is the last place we went on the Saturday gezi.  It was amazing.  For reals, this is a ROMAN CISTERN.. and now its just filled with junk.. well its just a regular store.  I wonder if anyone even knows what this actually is.  If so, they dont think about it and just use it for whatever.  Fantastic, I love this city.

Randomly jumping back to food now.   Check it out, a huuge piece of bread called a balon.. its hollow and puffy, just as you would expect it to be, since they essentially named it 'balloon.'  

So then on Tuesday was a very short gezi after classes, to Eyüp, another district with buildings our guide loves.  And thats what the gezis are about, things he loves.  Our TA happens to live in Eyüp.

This building was the feshane! Yes, it was actually a factory for making fezes at one time, how exciting is that.  Apparently it was quite a big deal too, a pretty famous one, with bright aaand dark red fezes, fezes for rulers and fezes for regular people. Now that no one wears fezes anymore, its a hall where they hold events.. such as chess tournaments and ramazan (sp?) festivities :D. Also, check this out..

This basically means.. fez factory world children's fun park! wowowow, they have a funpark for this place right next door.  I love it, its amazing, we didnt get to go D:  Anyway, more scenes of Eyüp..

Very busy mosque. I'm no good at this game, I forget the name of it, but its one of the main ones for pilgrimages.. 

Pretty old well :)

Garden in the courtyard of another mosque, it was quite lovely, with grapevines, too! Really, I've seen grape vines everywhere, they arent ripe now though.

This is in that same courtyard, I thought there was a cat or two there, until a lady threw some food on the ground, then I realized there were cats everywhere! The kittens just kept crawling out of the woodwork.  Fairly common scene here :P

A view of Eyüp, oh yeah.. I didnt mention it was right on the Golden Horn, did I?  Anyway, it is.  The only thing that would have made this view better, to me would be.. the field you see the corner of full of people playing futbol.  Sadly it was empty.. which saddened me. Lets not dwell on my agony though, instead lets leave Eyüp..

Simitçi.. these are kinda everywhere, most street corners have either these or little police boxes.. or both.  Anyway, I went out of my way and looked for a few weeks to find simitçi #08, which is on İstiklal Caddesi.  It took me even longer to commit to taking a picture of it.. another few weeks.

So this isnt really on İstiklal, but its one of the sidestreets in that region, which are more pleasant anyway.  Usually İstiklal is just too crowdy to enjoy.. though its nice on Sunday mornings... and maybe even other mornings too.  Check out all the kitties!  I cant get over how nice people are to them, and dogs, here.  Today was pretty awesome, there was one hanging around the restaurant we drank a few çays at (cats seem to stake their claim on a restaurant and walk around the tables on the street being cute, hoping for handouts).. and the waiter would pet it and such, he also came up and asked Alyssa if she would feed it some of her su böreği, since she didnt seem to be eating it.  Sadly the cat didnt want it either..  The same waiter followed a random dog halfway down the street to offer it a glass of water.  Also, yesterday in Sultanahmet, the waiter had claims on a rather adorable kitten and had to fend off a customer who wanted to steal it from him :P  Tragically, the waiter had to work eventually and the customer came and stole it away.. it and the food it was eating on the steps. muahaha.  We almost always sit outside.. and this is one reason why :D