Adana Kebab Somewhere in Istanbul
I arrived early in the morning at Istanbul airport and I was brought to my modest hotel where I would be staying for the next few days. I hardly slept in the flight and I was just eager to get some rest first before heading out. I got an hour or two of rest at the hotel and decided that it was time to head out. My first impression of the area where the hotel is wasn’t very good but ultimately, nothing really bad happened. That was just how it looked like and maybe that it for the best. This is how people here live and they didn’t even bother me. There was a canteen nearby as well as small convenience stores.
Navigating the Streets in Istanbul
First I needed to get some money. I didn’t like the idea of continuing to use my card when I could just withdraw some cash one time and just use that instead. The currency of Türkiye is the Turkish lira and it is around 30 times less the value of the Euro, this means I would need a quite a bit of cash going around here which made my wallet grow fat. The nearest ATM here would be at the bridge which is a short walk away. I also used this as a way to orient myself as to where places are.
After I managed to get my cash. It was time to finally explore this part of the city. From the bridge I can tell that Istanbul is a huge city. There would not be any way I would be able to visit every single place here. Near the hotel also happened to be the Grand Bazaar. It is also near some of the city’s most important monuments, which is why I chose to stay here in the first place. The Grand Bazaar is a short walk away from the hotel but I would have to navigate a maze of streets here. Before that I decided to take a break from the noon day heat and get lunch. There are numerous eating places here and I saw a random restaurant here which serves the Turkish classic meal – kebab.
Kebab is basically meat on skewers and depending on how it is made, it can be very tasty. This one? It was alright. There wasn’t anything great about it. I thought that it would be easy to find good kebab here but this one wasn’t that great. I thought the meat was a bit dry but at least it was spicy as I like it to be. They have an English menu here which means that they can also cater to tourists. They have other stuff as well but this was what I was looking for. I would end up eating kebab most of the trip as I look for one which is very nice.
[xmlgm {http://www.worldwanderings.net/kml/GrandBazaarIstanbul.kmz} zoom=19]