Tuesday, July 12, 2011

Dondurma on the Bosphorus

7/12/11

Tonight a couple of us went down to Bebek, which is a beautiful area of Istanbul right on the Bosphorus.  It is one of the richest neighborhoods in Istanbul and you could tell by the restaurants, cars, and by the people.  To get to Bebek from Boazagici University, where we are staying you have to go down a really long big hill that takes you straight down to the Bosphorus.  I had been told that the hill was almost vertical but I thought that people were exaggerating, no hill could be as bad as they were making it out to be.  Boy was I wrong, that hill made my knees hurt going down (because it was so steep I had to keep myself from going to fast and falling down) and made my calves hurt going up (going up I literally felt like I was crouching down just to get up that hill).  We were all scared of falling walking down but truthfully if you fell backwards you wouldn't have hurt yourself at all because the ground was so sloped that the ground behind you was not that far at all from you.  If you fell you literally would have fallen only a couple of feet before you hit the ground.

Once we got to Bebek, however, we realized that our treacherous trek down the hill was well worth the sights we saw.  Bebek is a bustling area with lots of places to go hang out and eat.  Out of all the sights and smells, however, the one worth mentioning was the ice cream (or as they call it dondurma) and waffle places.  For 1.5 TL you could get a scoop of the most delicious ice cream.  They had some of the most interesting flavors - hazelnut (which they seem obsessed with), pistachio, sour cream ( which is basically what they call yogurt), and all sorts of interesting fruits.  I settled for banana dondurma and strawberry sorbet which was so amazing that I would it eat it everyday if you didn't have to walk down and up that awful hill.  They also sold these very interesting waffle things where you could pile up fruits and all these whipped toppings, they smelled like heaven and for 9 TL you could eat heaven too.  I didn't get a waffle thing-am-bob tonight but definitely soon I am going to make the trek back down that hill and eat one.

2 comments:

  1. i want yummy ice cream....bring some back for me! :) <3333

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  2. oops sorry, this is jenny. apparently my username is based off of a blog i made for my culanth class 1st semester....haha

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