Istanbul .. Day 8

Our biggest excitement, and far more pleasurable than in previous travels, has been deciding where to eat our main meal each day and what to have. We've enjoyed Italian and wonderful Thai but mostly traditional Turkish. Many of the ingredients here are familiar -- lamb and beef (gyros, skewered or minced), rice, bulgar, spinach, real tomatoes (not plastic), cheese, peppers, yogurt, olive oil -- and many menus include English. But the names are strange -- Içli köfte, Lahmacun, Iskender kebap, Pide, Gözleme -- and the flavors are wonderfully subtle and varied. Every meal tastes even better than its predecessor. Prices look a little like Paris .. a coffee is 4 or 5, a side dish or dessert is 10, an entree is 20 or 25. But here one Lira equals 56 cents while in Paris today one Euro is $1.32. So our dinner costs up to $40.

We intend to revisit every restaurant except one bad touristic choice serving fries. In the window of one traditional restaurant, two round ladies all day long sprinkle a thin flatbread with spinach, cheese or meat and then fold and bake it. They called it "pancakes" and it's eaten as an appetizer or sold out the door in a box like pizza. It was surprisingly bland but everything else there was wonderful .. spicy lamb cubes on a smoky aubergene paste, stuffed grape leaves, a side dish of thick yogurt with garlic and olive oil for the bread. The waiter said they cooked like 100 years ago (but the food WAS fresh). When he learned we were here all month, of course he gave us free tea. The best (and most expensive) meal of that type was, surprisingly, at a modern art museum right on the Bosporous .. except that a 12-story cruise ship was docked a few feet away, blocking our view of Asia.

Strong black tea is ubiquitous, sweet apple tea too. Coffee is more to follow dinner, though we know where to have a latte with our morning Sudoku. Authentic Turkish coffee, with mud in the bottom of the little cup, is sometimes available. It's exactly like in the Greek isles years ago, but don’t call it Greek coffee here. The only decaf is instant Nescafé, as in Greece.

We haven’t seen or heard an American tourist yet. But for ice cream we happened to sit with a delightful Danish couple, both retired small-town dentists. Of course they speak all the Scandinavian languages plus French, German and excellent English and have been everywhere, even all over the US. Now THAT’s traveling.