Istanbul is one of the most visually stunning cities that we have ever visited. A mix of the ancient and the new, every corner is bustling with life, color, and unexpected experiences. It’s one of those places in the world that should be experienced at a slow pace with lots of aimless meandering thrown in. Day 1: Leisurely visit to the Hagia Sophia Take an easy first day and try to get over your jet…
Winters are the perfect time to curl up in a stuffy chair and grab a glass of hot chocolate (or wine) and lose yourself in the pages of a good whodunnit. My personal favorite mystery novels are the ones with a closed room murder in a lavish country house somewhere, a fixed number of suspects and lots of motive! So basically, every other novel by Agatha Christie ? Since I am a big fan of…
Starting the day with Turkish Breakfast Hotel breakfasts in Istanbul are a fry cry from the dry toast, boiled egg and stale Danish pastries affairs that I have often had in the US. The morning buffet had bread, croissants, cookies, salads, marmalades of orange, lemons, and cherries, fresh strawberries, cranberries, figs, olives, dates, prunes, sweetened yogurt with muesli, egg and sausage rolls, omelets, cold cuts, cheese, cakes and a glorious view of the Bosporus. I…
First Impressions The plane circled the skies waiting for its turn in the queue for the landing strip. I craned my eyes to get a glimpse of this ancient city over the winter rain clouds. Istanbul was a mosaic of red rooftops, mosque domes, and minarets. Smoke escaped from the chimneys of the houses in the early morning, and the grey sky promised a cold and cheerless day. After exiting immigration we searched the exit…
As part of my Around the World in Books Reading Challenge, my pick for Albania was the Man Booker International Prize winning novel by Ismail Kadare. The General of the Dead Army is a dark and depressing work of fiction. It chronicles the journey of an Italian general who goes to Albania with an important mission. He and a priest travel across Albania exhuming bodies of dead Italian soldiers who died fighting in Albania during…
Spend this thanksgiving weekend cooking and binge watching the Harry Potter movies. At the end of the seventh movie, I decided to re-read the books. Although I have re-read all seven books several times, it really amazes me that these are still as engaging as when I first started with the series. In this post I will attempt to analyze the first book and why it works. After all, fantasy fiction genre has a lot…
Winter is here. As temperatures plummet across the northern hemisphere and people scurry inside warm houses, it is the perfect time to settle into that recliner, grab a cup of hot cocoa and read a book. What else are you going to do? (Yes, you can always binge watch Netflix, but is that what you really want to do with your life? What I read is determined by how my day was, what I am…
He came out of nowhere. K and I were standing against the railings of the Galata Bridge in Istanbul, watching the sea gulls dance over the murky waters of Bosporus when a balding man materialized next to us. He was wearing a blue wind cheater and bobbing up and down excitedly. “You hungry? You come inside my restaurant,” he said and pointed to one of the restaurants on the bridge. “I will make fifteen percent…
