Thursday, October 13, 2011

By the sea in Alanya

We arrived in Alanya somewhat exhausted to a tiny but beautiful room right over the sparkling Mediterranean. K has some lovely friends here who have generously provided us with a gorgeous room for a few days. A fantastic lightening storm was swirling around over the water for hours last night, during and after the sunset.

We explored a little last night. Alanya and this part of turkey is really different from the southeast--it's like Florida except, much, much better. Orange trees and banana trees are everywhere but its green and lush and not flat. Alanya itself is a huge tourist destination apparently, I was expecting a little village but it's more hotel after hotel if Russian tourists. Interesting times on the beach.

This morning we brought Mina to the doctor--she has something like baby bronchitis apparently, but we got some antibiotics and are hoping for a quick recovery. Then K's friend brought us to a fantastic traditional Alanyan food restaurant--I am posting extensive photos to drool over below. Lots of vegetables which I love. We ate outside under the trees. First a wedding soup with mint, wheat, chicken and lamb. Then plates kept coming-- black-eyed peas with dill and tomatoes, stuffed cabbage and grape leaves, spinach with yogurt, eggplant with yogurt, zucchini cooked in garlic and walnut paste-amazing, eggplant stuffed with lamb,  pickled cabbage, greens and rice and okra stewed with tomatoes--not slimy at all. Finishing with dessert of squash stewed in syrup and halva, which is not at all like halvah and I was completely unable to figure out what it was made of, and thyme tea, in the glass. We laughed because after all that food, before dessert, they asked us what we wanted for the main course--luckily they allowed us to decline a main course.

In Ankara there were 3 hailstorms in the day we were there and in Alanya everyone is at the beach swimming.

I missed some kind of amazing dinner, Kahraman went but Mina fell asleep early and we didn't want to wake her by hauling her around.   

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