Pics from Turkey Part II--Life & Culture

So, here are the friends I was visiting in Istanbul! Eun Sang and Suhye are the proud parents of Seo Hyun and Jun Seo. They quite enjoyed their two years in Turkey, and returned briefly to Korea for 6 months, leaving just days after my visit. The kids had forgotten most of the English they had learned, but it was fun to hear them tossing around some English phrases by the end of my visit. :)
These two pics are in a shop in the Egyptian Spice Bazzaar (aka market). Suhye and I stopped here to buy some boxes of Turkish delight. The food in the case below is primarily turkish delight...a gummy sort of candy that can be flavored with fruit or nuts. I liked the pistachio versions...

I had to ask Suhye what these guys were selling because it looked so intriguing. Turns out, they were shoe-shiners!
Suhye and I stopped for lunch, and the waiter offered to take our picture. You can't really see it on our plates, but we ordered 'meatballs' which which actually more like flat-rectangular pieces of meat. Very tasty though. There's also a colossal plate of bread behind Suhye's arm. I even tried the huge pepper on my plate and it wasn't half-bad!
These two vendors were very common sights in Istanbul. The top one is selling roasted chestnuts. The bottom one is selling this hard bread called simit. I wished I could've tried both, but there's only so much food I can eat in a day, so I didn't try either. It was also common to see guys selling roasted corn on the cob.

Here's my handful of Turkish Lira! The same guy's picture is on all the money. I am told he was the first president of Turkey, and a real hero. If I'm not mixing up my stories, he helped the country become way more literate by revamping how words were written, or something like that...??? I don't know, you'd be better off researching for yourself!

Here's lunch near Ephesus...Shish Kebabs for me...
A snack on the domestic flight to Ephesus. The tea is called Cay ("chai"), but tastes nothing like the Chai we serve at Starbucks! It's super bitter & strong. People drink it multiple times of day, but usually add around 4-5 cubes of sugar. Nasty! Below the tea is a towelette. Even our rental car had towelettes!
This was at a coffee shop near the market. The baklava was divine! Yum! Notice the glass the Cay is in--very traditional. To the left is the remains of my turkish coffee. It's half grounds (when you're done, you flip the cup and apparently read your fortune in the coffee grinds...), but the ounce of liquid is quite sweet and tasty. In the bottom right corner is my regular cup of Joe, or filtered 'kahve' to the Turks.

This was my first breakfast in Istanbul, and it was splendid! The bread gets spread with this salty cheese (see the green tub?). It's known simply as white cheese. The fruit juice (served at room temperature) was very tasty too.