palaces and peacocks

K has been away in Ankara for the past few days--on Saturday he interviewed Ban Ki Moon, the Secretary General of the UN in Istanbul so he had to follow up with a prompt visit to all the Turkish Television guys. This has led to less photographs, unfortunately, I am much more comfortable looking like a complete tourist and taking photos when I'm next to him.

Before he left we went to the Asian side--(Istanbul is half in Europe and half in Asia--it's okay, I had to be educated on this) and had dinner at the Ciya Sofrasi restaurant that was written up in the New Yorker (link to an abstract of the article). The chef is digging up traditional Turkish recipes and home-cooking and trying to preserve them as well as driving to local villages to purchase ingredients. The food was delicious, much different from most of the food we've been having. One stand-out was lamb cooked with sour plums--I should have taken photos, I know, but I forgot. And a stuffed squash with yogurt sauce, mmm. maybe we'll go back.

While K is gone I've been doing less ambitious trips to places that I know I can get home from by myself, since I have no ability to understand directions that I am given. I went to The Istanbul Modern, which was a gorgeous building. I have to say I like visiting the old churches and mosques better than the art--I'm not sure what this means or that I like admitting to it! Yesterday I went to the Dolmabahce palace which was huge, huge but they didn't let you wander around on your own which was disappointing. So we were herded around in a tour of the last palace of the Ottoman empire--I think I read that it cost 34 tons of gold to build, but that sounds like alot so maybe I'm misremembering. It was faded opulence at its best, with fat blue peacocks on the lawn--peacocks are much bigger than I thought they were, really huge. all the ceilings had a amazing tromp l'oeil ceilings with scenes and fruit and all kinds of stuff painted into them. I could have laid on the floor and stared at the ceilings for days. Dolmabahce was the huge palace that we got stuck in the rain outside drinking tea last week. Unfortunately they don't allow any photography--I thought about sneaking but there were those military guards with the supposedly unloaded guns everywhere.