After a less-than-satisfying run of local food for the past ten days, we decided to get ourselves some "western" food for lunch for a change today. If there's a place to do it in Istanbul, it's Taksim Square as the popular city square is full of dining options when it comes to international cuisine.
We ended up sitting down at Kitchenette, a diner serving international comfort food (think pasta, pizza, burger and fries!) at Taksim Square next to the historic Marmara Hotel.
Traditional Fish and Chips on a platter never smells so good (that's what happens after ten straight days of crappy food)! The sea bass fillet deep-fried with a light batter was accompanied by some crispy French fries and three different dipping sauces (tartar sauce, green pea aioli and honey). Pretty nice.
Chicken wings with potato wedges weren't bad either.
The calamari was a little bland to tell you the truth but hey, it's still better than any local food we had the last few days.
Food Rating: 5/10
Price: €€
Address: Gümüşsuyu Mahallesi, Tak-ı Zafer Cd. No:3, 34437 Beyoğlu/İstanbul, Turkey
Closest Metro Station: Taksim
Tel: +90 212 292-6862
Website: www.kitchenette.com.tr
After spending 10 days in Turkey, I was still puzzled with their hotel ranking system. So does 5 star really mean the best or the worst?
This night, we arrived at yet another 5 starred hotel, Buyuk Anadolu. The exterior looked decent but definitely not 5 star material. Maybe 3 star at best.
The hotel was huge like a shopping mall or commercial building so they even had security guards there to patrol the premise.
It was not short on facilities, that's for sure. There were things like internet room (with pentium computers), table tennis room, snooker room and chess room. Not bad.
When we finally had time to check out our hotel room, we were hugely disappointed.
How could parts of the toilets still look unfinished? For instance, the sink still had rough edges which were not smoothed out and the bathtub was leaky. The balcony door also failed to lock properly which got us worried the whole night. Good thing that, we were leaving the hotel at 5am the next morning so our stay would be a very brief one.
I thought our friends summed this up pretty nicely, "It's like someone has come to build a huge hotel here with all the facilities and left when it's unfinished. And NO ONE bothered to give it some proper maintenance. After a while, it looks like this.". Well said.
Rating: ❤
Price: €€
Address: Büğdüz Mahallesi, Anadolu Otel İç Yolu, 06750 Akyurt/Ankara, Turkey
Tel: +90 312 841-6464
After visiting Göreme Open-Air Museum, one of Turkey's many UNESCO World Heritage sites in the morning, it was time for us to catch a late lunch. Located on the second floor of Ortahisar Culture Museum, Kapadokya Kültür Müze Restaurant is a casual restaurant serving modern Turkish food in an artsy vibe. That's where we would be having lunch this afternoon (It was almost 2:30pm!)
Believe it or not, it's going to be one of our finer meals of this trip (although the group menu looks a little disappointing comparing to the "ordinary" a la carte menu).
First to arrive was our vegetable soup with lentils. This tasted a bit like minestrone soup. Very beany.
Soup was followed by a simple salad.
Main course was erişte, Turkish egg noodles (at least, that's what I thought it was) with chicken, potato and carrots. Very small portion but luckily, I wasn't all that hungry.
Our dessert was some kind of rice pudding. I always thought of Turkish as the most sweet toothed people in the world having tasted their Turkish delights and ice-cream all these years but this was very light for a dessert.
Following our quick lunch, we walked around the area while waiting for our ride to arrive.
The nearby Ortahisar Castle is another monumental architecture in Cappadocia.
Some nice pictures we took from Göreme Open-Air Museum this morning. They have done amazing work to preserve these rock-cut churches from more than a thousand years ago.
An amazing site with spectacular landscape entirely sculpted by mother nature (ie. erosion).
A shot from Çarıklı Kilise (the Church with Sandals) overlooking the Cappadocia region.
On our way to see the famous "fairy chimneys".....
Some of the "fairy chimneys" - a surreal landscape of carved-out towering rock formations. We were told that they supposedly change their colors around sunset.
The wall paintings faded a little but still in very good shape.
Food Rating: 3.5/10
Price: €€
Address: Cumhuriyet Meydanı No:15, 50650 Ortahisar Belediyesi/Ürgüp/Nevşehir, Turkey
Tel: +90 384 343-3344
Website: www.kapadokyakulturmuzerestaurant.com
We got into the Cappadocia region late and after a relatively smooth check-in at our hotel, we went out for a quick stroll.
Mado-ice cream is a century-old chain that has more than a hundred branches in Turkey alone (not counting overseas branches). They serve Turkish ice-cream made with traditional techniques and the flavors are more or less like the ones at a typical gelato shop. I was surprised they have a branch here in such a remote location.
The pistachio ice-cream was a little too soft for my liking but I like the rich flavors. Now that we're done with our ice-cream, it's time to go back and crash early because we have something important to do before dawn.
We woke up around 4am thanks to the music from a neighbouring church. It was time for us to wake up anyways as Anatolian Balloons Cappadocia had a driver to pick us up from our hotel.
Hot air ballooning is obviously very popular in the Cappadocia region due to the amazing landscape and gorgeous view from up top. No wonder thousands show up at this hour waiting to get airborne.
For a moment, I thought our ride would be canceled as there was not enough wind this morning (we were told that by the organizers). They were even deflating the air balloons at one point.
I obviously couldn't hide my disappointment.
We quickly took a few pictures and were all set to leave the valley.
But suddenly winds began to blow and they announced it was a go! Let's get those air balloons ready, baby~!
All set ready to fly...
It was my first air balloon ride so naturally, I was a little nervous.
But as soon as we got airborne, I no longer had those butterflies in my stomach.
The skies were finally getting clearer and brighter for us.
This view of the valleys was truly incredible.
There have to be at least hundreds of these air balloons floating around the sky.
And it felt like we were chasing each other all over the valleys.
Finally, we were starting to slow down and ready to land. We were instructed to duck down once we heard their signal.
A toast to very good and safe landing.
A certificate for this memorable experience from my "pilot".
It was truly a remarkable experience cruising through the valleys of Cappadocia in these hot air balloons. It was a little nerve-wracking at times to be floating around these bizarre shaped rock formations and be able to touch them with my bare hands but it's an experience I will bring back home to cherish for the rest of my life. And quite frankly, I don't think I have the balls to do it again some other time.
Food Rating: 4.5/10
Price: €€
Address: Kavaklıönü Mahallesi, Şht. Cem Bul Cd., 50400 Ürgüp / Nevşehir, Turkey
Tel: +90 384 341-8500
Website: www.mado.com.tr/english
