Taksim and the Spice Market
I’m drinking an automatic espresso overlooking the Aegean in Kusadasi. I had to move into hotel business center and hijack their ethernet cable as they have no wifi. Back to a few things I didn’t have a chance to write about from Sunday.
On Sunday evening after we took a short rest from the marathon we took the tram to the area where the spice market was. There was somewhat of an outdoor restaurant area near the water that had quite a few people in it. TJ said Rick Steve’s said there were good fish sandwiches here. There was a queue of about 5-6 people in a fast moving line where 2 guys were quickly building fish sandwiches so that looked as good as any. They cost 5 Turkish Lira. They turned out to be pretty tasty. I was so hungry after the marathon I could have eaten about 3-4 of them right then but decided to wait so I could try some other food. The only thing that could have added more to the sandwich was some kind of tartar sauce or mayonnaise. The only condiments I saw were salt and lemon juice. Right by our heads while we were eating where a long line of fishing lines of people fishing from the level just above. A few times I saw weights fly inches away from people’s heads next to me as they were casting out.
Then we walked into an underpass underneath the road into the Spice Bazaar area. It was visually pretty interesting. Many different spices as one might expect. Proprieters speaking broken English trying to get you to buy spices or candy. I did notice the same face on t-shirts that was on several of the paper Turkish currency. I think it was Ataturk.
We then road the tram several stops to the Taksim district. It seemed less touristy overall and where young people who lived in Istanbul may actually come to hang out. It was very busy. We walked past groups of people just leaving soccer matches as we came in with light red Turkish Telekom jersey’s on.
One thing I noticed is that there was no Western music here, for that matter most places in Turkey in general. Also the music sounded good. Seemed like modern Turkish music. Mainly acoustic guitar and a man singing. We went into some place someone in the group had read about. It had mediocre bar food, the usual kebap's and meatballs with Efe's beer. There was a guy singing in there with a deep voice. Something that kept making us laugh was before every song he kept saying "seh, seh, seh" or something like that. We later found it meant what we thought it was. "test".