hairnets for lemons

We came across this fantastic shiny yellow building, it looked like it could be a garage or something utilitarian but it was so cute--especially bright yellow. I'm into the shiny bright buildings.

I tried to catch this tea seller as I've been trying the whole trip to catch a tea seller. Thousands of men run around istanbul every day carrying tea trays full of little glasses of tea, however they move fast...apparently.

I am still gorging myself on the delicious cherries, they are around $2 for 2lbs so I'm not kidding about the gorging. These cherries are being sold out of the back of a horse-drawn cart! in a city of 14 million people! a horse drawn cart!

Here is the horse! and his cart! also notice in the shot above this one that the cherries are being weighed with a balance scale. 2010--horse drawn cart with balance scale! obviously exciting for this tourist.

fantastic carved marble fountains for getting drinking water everywhere...most are pretty derelict and unused. this one was in a very manicured garden.

As usual I am endlessly fascinated with the wonderful carved wood trimmings that are also pretty derelict. At least this trip I haven't taken all photos of the gorgeous falling down buildings--I think some of them have actually fallen down and are replaced or perhaps I'm just used to seeing them everywhere.

I kept forgetting to photo during dinner as I was really hungry and dinner was really delicious--this is a wonderful soft eggplant thing--I wish I knew how to cook it. It was cold and served in a vinaigrette. Behind it is the Hamsi which I didn't think to photo until after I gobbled half of it. But the best thing about dinner was:

lemons with hair nets! (I may have exceeded my exclamation point limit with this post but I am feeling enthusiatic) I've never seen this before but they cover each half of the lemon in a little blue net with a little purple tie so that the lemon seeds don't fall into your fish...truly amazing! Martha Stewart is totally going to copy this idea.
We are moving out of our cute but stinky apartment today and into K's friends house(the ones with the amazing garden) for our last few days in Istanbul. So lots of cleaning and then hopefully a trip to the spice market as I want to sample all 39 kinds of dates. K is less excited about this.