Kale and Bogazici University Monday, June 18, 2012

Our plan today was to visit Troy's college here in Istanbul. I have neglected to mention that this entire Istanbul trip was made a reality by the adventuresome nature and hard work of our son, Troy. As a sophomore Morehead-Cain Scholar at UNC, Troy chose to take a semester abroad here in Istanbul at the prestigious Bogazici University. Bogazici means "Bosphorus" and the university has a commanding view of he Bosphorus.
Troy has documented his adventures over the last six months on his blog www.thomesley.wordpress.com. I highly recommend his well written and informative blog. He traveled to Egypt, Jordan, Israel, Turkey, Georgia, Armenia, Nagorno-Karabakh and Cyprus. He has more travels on tap this summer after we leave as he works on a research paper.
Monday was another late sleeping day and then we walked to Taksim and caught the bus to Bebek, a nice area just before the Mehmet Bridge. Our goal for a late breakfast was to eat at Kale, a Restaurant featured on Anthony Bourdain's No Reservations a few years ago. We had already tried Sur Ocakbasi per the Bourdain reference and Kale turned out to be just as spot on.
We arrived at Kale and found a table outside. We ordered the Turkish breakfast for four or "Kahvalti". We were brought tea (cay), eggs still in a metal skillet with some beef sausage, cucumber and tomato salad, fried Cyprus cheese, two other kinds of cheese, olives, bread and heavy cream floating in honey. It is hard to describe in words how good a meal this was. Suffice it to say that when we travel anywhere else, Bourdain has gone we will take his advice. Clearly he and his producers put a ton of research into the places they visit to find these local gems. We were impressed that neither Kale or Sur Ocakbasi had any tourists besides us.
After breakfast, we walked the beautiful board walk to the bay area of Bebek. There were many boats and people fishing and a guy swimming in the heavy current of the Bosphorus, just letting it take him down the river and having the time of his life. There were guys fishing and people lounging on their boats. There were guys sunbathing but no women, we caught a cab to go to Bogazici. We went up a steep hill and got behind a loaded truck. Our cab was struggling to make it up the hill and we were truly concerned that the truck would roll back and hit us. But, we made it!
The campus was beautiful and we fell truly blessed that Troy was able to come here to school and that we were able to visit him. For Fariba, it has been a chance to get close to Iran and have a middle eastern experience in food and the many other sensations. One day we hope to go to Iran when the governments of the US and Iran quit getting in the way of the people.
After visiting the college, we came back into our neighborhood and enjoyed some nargile and then a nice barbecue meal before we had to get up really early the next day to fly to Izmir to see Ephesus.