And...the FOOD

I love it when a day full of sightseeing leaves me with an empty stomach and a great excuse to try a lot of new, delicious food.

Luckily, on one such occasion, we stumbled across a hustling, bustling fish market. We walked through the market and followed our noses (and a crowd of hungry men) to these guys:

5 minutes later we were happily munching a roll filled with freshly caught fish hot off the grill, lettuce, tomato, salt, and a squeeze of lemon.

The next day we worked up quite an appetite wading through the Grand Bazaar (fending off a lot of "Where you from?" and "You wanna look at some...carpets?"), so we headed to the Spice Market...a magical place full of spices, nuts, cheese, baklava, turkish delight, and free samples. We sampled a few things and wound up buying a bag of delicious honey roasted, sesame-seed peanuts. The guy we bought them from said they'd last us for the rest of our trip...but we actually ended up finishing them by bedtime...shows how much he knows.

And, because Istanbul is famous for their Doner kebabs, we had to make room in our bellies for a representative sampling of those too. It's a tough life, but we all have our trials.

Here is Rob making his "I'm about to eat another delicious Doner" face.

Istanbul was definitely one of our favorite stops this year.