And let me tell you, this was a carnival like no other I have ever seen. To most Americans, any carnival or festival isn't complete without hotdogs and beer, but I can say easily that I have never had more fun than last night.
The best part of Ramazan is, of course, the iftar hour, the hour that breaks the fast and everyone eats like there's no tomorrow. Or, rather, eats like there is tomorrow but you won't be able to eat all day then either. The carnival is filled with every kind of food imaginable and you're just insane not to try and taste a little bit of everything. And believe me, I did my part very well.
I'm still not a huge fan of Turkish coffee, although it is starting to grow on me. I suppose my years of drinking coffee in America, especially the Starbucks kind, has not prepared me for the bitter, granular taste of Turkish coffee. But this stuff here is by far the best.
The coffee is made over an open fire, giving the coffee an almost oaky, woody taste.
The coffee is served in small cups because, obviously, you can't have too much of this stuff.
As if the coffee didn't get me wired up enough, I then ate some sugar on a stick. Seriously. This stuff is like salt water taffy, without the salt water taste. It's 100 percent pure sugar and it is utterly delicious.
There are, of course, other more traditional Turkish sweets, like baklava, sekerpara, sutlac, and these walnuts covered in some kind of syrupy sugar.
And it's not like there's nothing healthy at a Ramadan carnival. It's just that we chose not to eat most of it. Like all these healthy fruit and nuts.
I did have some fresh-squeezed pomegrantite juice. See, that's healthy!
After all that food, we really needed to walk around a bit, so we joined the thousands of other Turks walking the Hippodrome.
But, despite the food and the crowds, by far the coolest part of the night was seeing the Blue Mosque all lit up and aglow.
1 comment:
that looks like an amazing time!
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