Ancient History And Some Tasty Treats

Day 2 and with very little sleep to work with, I decided to make the most of it, scarf some coffee, and hit the sights. I went to the Haight Sofia and the Archeological Musem, which are almost beside each other. The Haight Sofia was interesting because it was originally built by the Byzantines as a church and then turned into a mosque by the Muslims in the middle ages. It looked really weird because they had uncovered some of the old frescoes that the Muslims had plastered over. Also, it was designed to be a church, but then used as a mosque, which has a different shape. So, it almost felt like it was just massive vandalism.

Next, the archeological museum was really interesting although I did feel that I couldn't take stuff in after a while because I just ran of steam. But there were some really intricate tombs and carvings that were completely jaw breaking. They also had artifacts from Troy and apparently, they think the city was rebuilt at least 4 separate times, but that was about all I got :-).

I made it back to the hostel at midafternoon and spent the timing chilling until my cooking class at 4:30. It turns out that it was only a block away, so super simple. The class was fantastic and realistically was my first taste of real Turkish food that wasn't crappy versions of street food. The class was taught by Eveline, and she runs the school/restaurant called Cookingalaturka. It's an interesting business model. She teaches a lunch and/or evening class with the help of two staff members. During the class, which has about 8 people, you cook up a 5 course traditional meal. Of course, you make more than 8 people can eat so the extra food is sold to any potential patrons who decide to drop in. So, we ended up cooking a red lentil soup that's a little spicy but also has mint, dill and parsley so it's one of those soups that has new flavours with every bite. After that we had eggplant stuffed with tomatoes, onions, garlic, spices and slow poached in olive oil/water for an hour. Next, we had some zuchinni pancakes with some turish cheese (similar to Feta) and spices mixed in. After that, the only meat dish, was grape leaves stuffed with lamb, beef and love. Finally, for desert, we made these delicious semolina sponge cookies dripping in syrup. Fantastic.