Fatih

Today Claire and I went on a mission to find some Byzantine churches in the old part of Istanbul called Fatih. Typically, we did not actually accomplish anything that we set out to do, but we had a good time anyway. Google needs to learn about Turkey. My top priorities for them are Turkish and the locations of things on maps.

We made it to an amazing restaurant called Eski Kafa where you go into the kitchen and point to what you want.

We each got a plate of different delicious vegetarian things including bulgur kofte balls, eggplant stuffed with pilav, potato börek, fasulye beans, and grape leaf dolma.

You can sit outside in camping chairs with a giant stone thingy as your table. The waiter let us try all of their juices that they make, I got hibiscus and Claire got plum.

It comes with yogurt and little pots of hot pepper flakes and mint. Then a friendly cat came to visit and sat next to our table.

Many tulips are in bloom in Istanbul now!

Then we stopped for a sarma from Fatih's famous sarmacısı, in operation for 4 generations, since the Ottoman time.

Sarma is a kind of spongey cake soaked in sweet syrup with apricot jam and coconut and pistachio on top.

We never made it inside a Byzantine building, but we did get to the Şeyzade Camii, built by Mimar Sinan in 1548.