A Lovely Saunter through Adana!

Hello!

Today has been truly enjoyable – for me at least!  Robert says that I love to wander aimlessly along in strange cities and look into shop windows, and I guess I do.  There has certainly been a lot to look at today, that’s for sure!

Much calmer day from our window!

Me on Hadrian's bridge!

Hadrian's bridge with Hilton in the background

We were up about 7:30 am after a very comfortable night’s sleep.  Robert, who is not a fan of duvets, worked out the perfect room temperature – slightly coolish, and it was lovely and quiet for sleeping.  The wind continued to blow very hard, though, through the night – according to Intellicast Weather, somewhere in the neighborhood of 25 mph!  Around 9 am we went upstairs to the Executive Lounge, for their excellent buffet breakfast.  Possibly not as much variety as the breakfast downstairs would have, but included (surprisingly, in a mostly Muslim country!) bacon, which was great!  We also have the stunning view from the 16^th floor to enjoy.  Looks like yesterday’s wind has mostly gone away, for which we are thankful! 

Out right after breakfast, and I have to admit, that it was chilly.  Something like 34 degrees, but feeling like 28.  I think that once we left the mountains and the snow, that I expected it to be warm outside but it really isn’t that at all.  I still needed my ear muffs and wished for a while that I hadn’t left my mittens in the room.

Variety of public and private buses!

Needs work!

And what do you think this is?

From the hotel grounds, it was a very short walk over a little canal bridge (canal runs right next to the hotel) to the Hadrian bridge, which was wonderful!  Amazing to think that right in the middle of this modern city, a bridge built thousands of years ago can still exist and carry foot traffic as well as the occasional scooter or motorcycle.  (I will add here, that - just as in the U.S. -when a bicycle or a motorcycle wants to consider themselves as pedestrians, they do the same here in Turkey. 

Minaret

Clock Tower

LOTS of worry beads!

Yesterday, as we were attempting to cross a very, very busy thoroughfare, we were joined in our midst by a motorcycle, who decided to do a U-turn on the pedestrian walk way.  One Turkish lady in particular took exception and very loudly denounced the rider and his motorcycle the entire way across the street!  The driver didn’t seem to mind.)

Once across the bridge, we followed the lovely park along past some very interesting and old buildings. 

Hookah

Variety of nuts and beans

Lots of sweets!

We walked past the Historic Girls High School Building, which has since become a photographic museum, and turned at the former provincial building, and headed toward the Great Clock tower (clock from Germany).  All this wandering took us right through a very old section of town, which was set up as a covered and uncovered bazaar area – all the architecture was alike.  The shops were truly fascinating!  There were shoe shops, and clothing shops, and shops wit piles of baklava and other sweetmeats; shops with worry beads galore, as well as hookahs of every type. 

Lots of stuff!

Interesting wiring and cabling here!

Dried somethings or other!

(According to Wikipedia, a hookah is a single or multi-stemmed instrument for vaporizing and smoking flavored tobacco, whose vapor or smoke is passed through a water basin—often glass-based—before inhalation.)  Certainly nothing that I have ever done, but some of them are really attractive. 

In some of the tea shops, there were piles of mysterious black seeds that were being ground by what looked like a coffee grinder and  extruded as thin gray rounds into cloth bags.  Having never seen anything like this, we paused and asked one of the proprietors what it was.  He handed me a brochure, and indicated the pertinent pages.  We have just looked it up, and it is Corek Otunun Faydalari (Turkish version = Çörek Otunun Faydalari) – or, when translated by the computer, Nigella seeds!  Who knew?!  (of course, who knows now!) 

Processing Nigella seeds!

Billboard add for a slip!!

The green stuff is henna!

The reason I was particularly interested is that several years ago, I wanted to try a recipe that called for Nigella seeds.  I looked everywhere – and you know, if you can’t find something in Southern California, it probably doesn’t exist!  But this was impossible to find and it wasn’t until several years later that I found the (in)famous Nigella seeds at Dean and DeLuca in Washington, DC.  Of course by then I had no recollection of what I wanted to put them in, as the recipe obviously is now long gone.  However, I still have them in our cupboard at home and find their use by tea makers extremely interesting! (Robert is going to try and translate more of the brochure, so possibly more info later!)

My new bracelet!

...without hand!

Mini Whisk broom and dust pan

There were also huge cloth bags of an interesting green color, which intrigued Robert.  Turns out, it’s Henna!  But green??  (Sandy, I do believe that I think it was henna that you tried on your hair once years ago, and it turned your naturally blonde locks green?)  Wow!  Apparently it is used for temporary tattoos among other things, and when mixed with water or lemon juice or vinegar, it turns from green to a deep red/brownish shade.  Just something else that you wanted to know!

Finally, after several hours of interesting sights, we found ourselves miraculously back to one of the jewelry stores that we had visited yesterday.  And did they still have “my” bracelet?  Of course they did!  I was very proud of Robert, who did some excellent bargaining.  I, of course, stayed out of the way as I have been told that my eyes can get way too eager, thereby giving the game completely away!  Very nice people.  According to what we have read, it is just not possible to conclude a transaction without sitting and drinking tea or Turkish coffee.  In my case, as I drink neither, water was supplied, while Robert was given the obligatory cup of tea.  In addition to my bracelet (which I LOVE! Thank you, Robert, SO much!!) we were also given a large all clock, with lots of advertising about the shop we had frequented!  That, let me say, will definitely remain here!  Robert has taken a photo or two of my lovely new bracelet, and I have also had him take one with both by new bracelet as well as the gold bangle bracelet that he got me at Nepenthe, in Big Sur, and that I have worn daily for years.  I think you can really see the difference in the gold color – 14K vs. 22K!  Obviously why Turkish jewelry shops have such vibrant displays!

From the jewelers, we recognized a building we had been in the last time we were here.  It’s basically something like 9 floors of shops of all descriptions.  You find what you want, and then take it down to the first floor and the Kasa to check out.  In our case, last time we were here, one of the restaurants we frequented had used a tiny whisk broom into an even tinier dust pan that were really cute to clear the crumbs from the table. 

Me at the Chinese/Sushi restaurant

Lots of red!

Now that's a lot of food...

We had found one there, but in the great and final packing up to get it home, the dust pan had broken (it’s only plastic) and really couldn’t be used. (Not that we usually use a whisk broom on the table after dinners, but we thought it was fun!)  This time, we were actually able to find it again and are figuring that we will be more careful in packing it up to go home.  (Photo included!) 

By this time, we were getting fairly leg weary and it was past lunch time, so we wanted to head back to the hotel.  However, as we were in the midst of the city, and seriously, they do not seem to put street signs anywhere we can find – we ended up taking a cab back to the hotel and up to the room for naps. Yeah!  Truly, a really lovely day out in town, and one of the last big cities we will be visiting in Turkey.

Tomorrow we turn our heads (and the car!) West and start along the Mediterranean coast.

More later!

m

xxx

We went up to the Executive Lounge at 6 pm for snacks and some lovely white wine.  We also watched the Tour de Valencia bike race in Spain for a bit on TV; team time trial, which is always fun.  Brings to mind the Tour de France, to which we are looking forward in July!

Downstairs about 7 pm for dinner, this time in their Fondragon Chinese/Sushi Restaurant.  Very interesting combination and the restaurant itself is quite lovely – lots of red around, which I always like.  For starters, we ordered two pieces of ebi sushi (cooked shrimp) for me, and I’m not sure what R ordered, but it turned out to be sushi with crab, and he enjoyed it very much.  Then, we had the 70 TL Chinese dinner – and oh, my, what a lot of food!  We started with soup – hot and sour for R, and crab corn soup for me; both excellent.  Then, for the meal, we had sizzling beef, garlic prawns, beef with eggplant and sweet and sour chicken – along with both noodles as well as vegetarian fried rice.  Wow!  Talk about a lot of food!  Basically, it filled the table!  And every bit of it was excellent!  And then they asked if we wanted dessert?  Absolutely NO place to put it, so we paid the bill and retired back upstairs to finish the blog and go to bed.  We’ve got about 6½ hours of driving tomorrow to get to Alanya, so hope to get a fairly early start!

That’s it for now!  Much love,

m

xxx