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Posts tagged ‘food’

Venice to Turkey 22

Day 22, Istanbul, May 25

We sleep in to 8AM today. We eat in the coffee shop on the first floor and they hand us a free breakfast. We stroll the hundred yards to the Tower on top of the hill and buy tickets to enter. €30 each. Priced in Euros, but only Lira and CCs accepted, interesting. The line is about 50 yards long.

The views from the top are great! We can see the whole city almost. After walking around the complete tower, we go down and head for the river, a fairly steep downhill. We walk across the bridge and almost immediately find the Spice Market. Very interesting indoor market that takes up several acres. Out the back side of the Spice Market, we step into the Grand Bazaar, a market to rival Cairo’s Souk. We walk a half mile through the Souk before turning around and heading back. Unfortunately, for reasons unknown, I lost a group of photos of the markets.

We make it back to the river and take a ferry across for 7 Lira (about 20 cents) each. Then it is almost 2 PM (remember we slept in) and the waterfront is lined with restaurants. We find one and have a light lunch of eggplant and salad.

Now we make the trek back up the hill to the Tower and back to our hotel. We take a much loved nap and head back out to find dinner.

We walk around and the crowds are fierce. We realize that tomorrow is a holiday for fasting and people are eating to prepare for it. Thoughts come to mind of people back home finding out that they can’t buy gasoline the next day so they fill up today. Okay, I know it’s a bad analogy but you get the idea.

We find a street with really good Turkish food and we sit down. First I ask the waiter if they serve wine and we are informed the entire street is dry. Well, as the wine drinkers that we are, we get up and walk away.

We settle on a restaurant named, Guney, next to the restaurant where we ate last night. The food is very good and they serve good Turkish wine.

Back in our hotel, we have a less than adequate room (after the horrible room we started with yesterday) where the AC died and we can’t even get the fan to run. This replacement room also has no windows. So it will be another uncomfortable night.

But, being the travel troopers that we are, we will make do.

Vietnam & Surrounds Day 06

Day 6, Tuesday 3/18/25, Hanoi, Vietnam

Today Hanoi will be 64 F with almost no humidity. A welcome relief from Bangkok heat. Overcast skies in the morning. One note, we hope that beds in Vietnam get more comfortable than this one. The bed is like a rock and it slopes toward the center! We arise at 6:30 and have a delicious buffet breakfast in the hotel. I could get used to all the different food in this part of the world! A few shots out of our hotel window and we grab our hats and and start the tour by 8:15.

Our guide today is Duon. The streets bustle with activity and we get our first views of life in Hanoi.

We visit the oldest pagoda in Vietnam, Tran Quoc Pagoda. It is located on Golden Fish Island in West Lake. It was built in the 6th century and is the oldest Pagoda in Vietnam. Symbolism and stunning architecture is everywhere and lucky yellow colors abound.

We pass a Statue of John McCain, who was a resident of the “Hanoi Hilton” from 1967-1973. We will visit this later today. Next we drive by the Parliament and see how large it is. Our core group of travelers today are 12 people. We will grow to 14 some days with others that join us for random day tours and will shrink near the end. At one point, we come across some vendors that, for a nominal fee of 25,000 Dong ($1 USD), you can buy a bird and free it, symbolizing the freeing of the Vietnamese people. (if you can consider people in a Communist country as free)

Across from Parliament is the Ho Chi Minh Complex where we go inside the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum. The Mausoleum has very strict rules. 1.) No photos. This was so strictly enforced. There were guards every 3-4 meters throughout the building and there was simply no chance to sneak off a photo. Ho Chi Minh’s embalmed body was on display in a glass case and you could clearly see him. It was amazing. Probably the best (if not the only) embalmed person on display in the world. His body is maintained twice every week! 2.) No hats. 3.) Hands must be at your side and not in pockets. 4.) No talking and no noise. Anyone breaking these rules would be ordered to correct their action and removed if necessary! So I have seen him but can’t prove it! I was chastised twice before we ever got inside, once for speaking and the other for having my hands in my pockets while waiting in the very long line. And of course I was chastised in Vietnamese so it took help to understand what rules I was breaking!

We then take a leisurely walk around the garden to see the two houses where he lived and worked from 1954 to 1969. Gardens are meticulous and there are guards everywhere you look. Even the cars he rode in are on display! So please remember Uncle Ho in Spring!

The red background of the Vietnamese flag symbolizes revolution and bloodshed. The golden star symbolizes the soul of the nation and the five points of the star represents the five main classes in Vietnamese society—intellectuals, farmers, workers, entrepreneurs, and soldiers.

Other things we see include the Gate of the Crystallization of Letters.

And the Temple of Confucius!

Lunch is had at Hoang’s Restaurant. Good Vietnamese food but I was having so much fun getting to know my new travel mates that I didn’t write down what we ate. There were many dishes sent around family style and I remember the beer was cold! Our group of 12 hammed it up outside the Restaurant!

After boarding the bus again, we see parking lots of motorcycles, scooters & buses. We then visit Hoa Lo Prison, nicknamed “Hanoi Hilton” in the Xuong District. This visit was very moving even from the North Vietnamese perspective. The torture described in several of the images that follow describe in some detail the horrors of the war! Even inside thick concrete walls with steel gates and locks, prisoners were shackled to the floor. The floors sloped away from the foot shackles so even lying down was virtually impossible!

Then we venture out and back on the bus to the Ethnicities Museum, which is a much lighter and pleasant experience. We learn a bit about the 54 different ethnic groups that live in Vietnam. They even depict in wood statues the sexuality of the people.

The tour today was long and tiring. But it is over for the day. We get back to the hotel by 5:30 PM, tired and hungry. We are told that Hanoi has an attraction similar to the train street we visited in Bangkok. So on tired feet we seek out this street which we are told is only a few blocks from our hotel. We get our first experience crossing a street in Vietnam. There are few to no controlled intersections, so you wait for a lull in traffic (I use that term loosely), put your hand up in a halting gesture and start walking. Do. Not. Stop. Traffic will go around you! We make it to the train restaurant street and have a glass of wine with our new travel friend, Hannah at Cafe Da Dong Duong (The Train Cafe). Fun conversations ensued. Glasses of wine here costs 180,000 Dong ($7.20 USD), which is not cheap compared to other things here. This street is a known tourist spot! Hannah takes her leave to go see a couple places she wants to see. We walk around train street and decide to have dinner here. We both have Pho with chicken and it is good!

We see a lot of amateur photographers photographing attractive young ladies modeling for them. One can only believe they are trying to get their big break! A train came through, but unlike Bangkok’s train at 2 mph, this one came through around 25-30 mph! Fun stuff! We limp on back to the hotel for bed.

See you tomorrow!

Vietnam & Surrounds Day 03

Day 03, Saturday, 3/15/25, Bangkok

It is now Saturday morning. Friday didn’t exist. We got on the plane on Thursday. We got to our hotel Saturday morning! We get up around 9 AM after arriving at 2. Our hotel is named ‘Chillax’, an appropriate name for the start of vacation! We have a complimentary breakfast in the hotel. Today we will seek out the Grand Palace, supposedly a ten minute walk from our hotel. By 10 AM it is already 33C (92 degrees F) and over 80% humidity. Street food is being prepared already by food carts parked at the curbs. Welcome to Southeast Asia! But here we are in another beautiful place in the world that we have yet to explore!

Turns out the Grand Palace is a mere 10 minutes walk. Even taking the wrong turn through Bangkok University doesn’t prevent us from finding it easily. It’s a huge complex of gorgeous temples. The currency here is the Thai Baht. One USD equals 33.5 Baht. We pay the 500 Baht (approximately 15 USD) each to enter. I also pay 200 Baht for a set of loose cover up pants as I am told that my shorts that come well past my knees are still not sufficiently long enough.

The attention to detail in this Palace/Temple complex is astounding! We even get to see a Changing of the Guard! Bright colors and golden alters and artifacts galore! After satiating our cameras inside the Palace, we find our way to the river a few blocks away. There we ride a river taxi as far as it goes and back again. I marvel at the motors I see on the small riverboats. They are 4 cylinder, 6 cylinder and even what appears to be a V-8 with an almost horizontal shaft 15 feet long to the propeller! The driver moves a bar attached to the motor so the entire motor swings from side to side to steer the craft! Turns out the end of the line for the river taxi is our stop, only two blocks from our hotel, the Chillax, where that is just what we do!

We have done all this in 35C plus degrees (95F plus degrees F). So we are tired and go back to our hotel and take naps for a couple of hours. I comment that I don’t know which I like less, 35C or -35C (-33F) that we had in Finland. The 95F here says it ‘feels like’ 107 with humidity. Just like in Singapore last year, Durian, the despised fruit, is a bigger no-no than smoking cigarettes! We are going to have to experience this at some point.

After our naps, we head out to find drinks and dinner. We find a fun street behind the hotel called, ‘Soi Ram Buttri’, that is full of street shops. Here you can buy food, clothing and drinks. The street goes for more than a mile in a ‘U’ shape.

We get a street side table and order beer and wine at a place called, ‘My House’. Their IPAs are good (and cold!). Cars and bikes drive through but are respectful of pedestrians, not like Egypt or Morocco. Fun signs assault our senses and another thing stands out. Something I first saw in South America seems to be prevalent here also. The overhead street wires are just complex jumbles that look impossible to sort out. I’d hate to be an electrician that is hired to repair a problem!

Modern busses drive through the streets carrying tourist to and fro. This is definitely a tourist destination. A lot of broken English is spoken here, even by many locals that want your tourist dollars!

We head back towards the hotel and stop at a restaurant, Hemlock, that was recommended to us by the front desk. It’s been here for over 30 years. We order authentic Indian food that includes Curried Crocodile! Nothing like we anticipated! It’s fabulous!

Then we go back to the hotel for the night. I do go up to the top floor where the hotel pool is and snap off a night shot overlooking the city!

See you tomorrow!