Exotic Istanbul, Türkiye

 

Well, a couple more pictures from Bulgaria. This is on our walk in the Pirin National Park. Mountains stretch almost 10,000 feet high! Beautiful!

Another shot of Bansko with the Pirin Mtns in the background. 

Istanbul, Turkey is an hour flight from Sofia, Bulgaria. It straddles Europe and Asia across the Bosphorus Strait. This is the Blue Mosque, built in the early 1600s and is a functioning mosque today. It has a total of 6 minarets. The minarets are the narrow towers that are built next to mosques. The calls to prayer (5 times a day) are broadcast from loudspeakers on the minarets. It was unforgettable to hear the 15 minute call to prayer.

Tom drinking Turkish tea at the Grand Bazaar.

Paying with Turkish lira.

Spice market

Gummi Bears, I was tempted to grab a handful!

Spice market

We really loved the food in Istanbul. This is chicken kebab. They served a lot of veal, chicken, and seafood. Since 90% of Turkey’s population is Muslim, pork was not found on the menu for religious reasons.

Roasted chestnuts and corn were popular street foods

The mighty Bosphorus and Galata Tower, built in 1348.  

The Camlica Tower (telecommunications) is located on the Asian side of the Bosphorus Strait and is 1200 feet tall. The Bosphorus has all kinds of traffic from sightseeing ferries to cruise ships and container barges. 

Below is another popular activity on the Bosphorus - swimming! It’s a very short clip. So badly I wanted to take a dip.

Typical Turkish breakfast

Turkish coffee is made of finely ground coffee beans. It’s brewed by boiling in traditional copper pots. It is much more aromatic and thicker compared to other coffees. 

More food!

This flat bread is called bazlama and it is crazy good, especially served with some black olives and olive oil. It’s said that the country that eats the most bread is Turkey, eating 440 pounds per person annually. We try not to eat so much bread anymore at home  but man did we chow it down in Istanbul! It was delicious!

The Basilica Cistern was built in the 6th Century for the eastern Roman Empire. It was used to store water. You can see that there is water in the cistern. We were on a metal walkway. Added to the cistern in more recent times are pieces of art like the Medusa sculpture in this picture. 

This is the head of Medusa lying sideways at the base of one of the columns. The story goes that there were 2 Medusa heads left over from the construction of the Hagia Sophia Mosque and, rather than getting rid of them, they decided to recycle the Medusas (sideways) into the base of 2 of the 28 columns (nearly 40 feet high). You can’t make this shit up.

This is the Hagia Sophia Mosque I was mentioning in the previous couple of pictures. It was completed in AD 537! It is a functioning mosque and museum today. 

Pistachio baklava

And a spot of tea

Visiting the Blue Mosque

Inside the mosque

I had to borrow a head covering to go inside the mosque. They hand out the head coverings at the entrance, collect them at the end, and schlep the whole lot of them back to the entrance for reuse. Weee!

We loved the rooftop dining overlooking the Bosphorus and the 2 mosques. And the food was WONDERFUL!! 

We had a great trip to Bulgaria and Istanbul. Consider checking them out yourself!

Getting a bang for our buck in Bansko, Bulgaria

 

On the way to Bansko we drove by this farmer running his disc across sunflower stubble. Sunflower, corn, and wheat are the primary crops in this region. And the fields are HUGE! Seems like you’d go down and back once and have to quit for the day! 

I wasn’t able to get the horse that was pulling this cart in the picture. Going too fast. 

We stayed at a spa resort in Velingrad that felt like a throwback from the 1970s during Soviet occupation times. 

View from the resort in Velingrad.

Our luxury deluxe for $116 at the Park Hotel & Spa. A riot!

My trout at the Velingrad spa was delish!!

Nothing like a haircut to learn about the culture! The barber was 15.

Bansko is a popular ski resort town in southern Bulgaria. It’s in the Pirin mountain range. We’ll be here for a couple of nights. 

Train through the mountains. I love a train, whether it’s (D)Amtrak or this Bulgarian beauty.

Taking a swim in the Black Sea

The Black Sea…it ain’t black!

 

We drove nearly 3 hours to the Black Sea. 

Bulgaria rocks with alcohol free beer!

View from our balcony

Climb from the parking lot to the hotel. I hope our car is still there when we leave 😳!

The waiter assured me this lobster was caught in the Black Sea. Tom had pork knuckle.  Both were great!

Plodding along in Plovdiv

Plovdiv is OLD. There’s evidence of habitation dating back to the 6th millennium BC. 

We ordered up this Serbian bread which was as tasty as it looks. It came straight out of the oven…and cost about 2 bucks.

Wondered briefly if that round guitar could be stuffed into a carry on bag…

This Roman theater dates back to the 1st Century. You can see concerts and shows here.

This monument is a 36’ tall statue of a generic Soviet soldier. The next picture is a close up. I didn’t mean for his machine gun to be pointing at me. 

Roses are big business in Bulgaria. They are harvested by hand in June and processed into perfumes, lotions, and the like. 

More Roman ruins. The ruins have been incorporated into the cityscape allowing visitors to stroll (sometimes climb) through them. 

The Bulgarian autobahn…who knew? Of course we can’t make sense of the signs. We just follow the little blue line on Google maps to get where we’re going. The speed limit is 140 km/hr or 86.8 mph.