Turkish Delights

Unbelievable, there are so many shops selling sweet around Istanbul and from my observation, those sweets are sold out everyday...

...a mixed flavours of Turkish Delights...but strangely these kind of sweets are not so really sweet at all...

...another version  of Turkish Delights, minty and with pistachios nut...

...but these girls are really sweet like Turkish Delights, the real Turkish Delights...

The other popular sweets, the Baklava, which are really damn sweet...

...and all the sweets are really sincerely sweet...

Turkish Crêpe

Turkish Crêpe is one of the authentic Turkish cuisine, better known locally as Gözleme, a village dish made of flat lavas or bread folded over various ingredients then baked on a griddle. It has been a popular light meal for centuries in Turkey. The pancake is called lava without toppings and became gözleme with toppings like spinach, cheese: cow's milk cheese or feta (sheep's milk cheese), minced meat/lamb, mashed potatoes are spread atop the bread and it is folded over them.

In many restaurants, there is a section where normally two ladies sit at a low table in full view of diners, rolling out the dough with a broomstick-handle-thin rolling pin, then spreads the nearly one-meter-diameter rounds of paper-thin dough on a circular griddle to bake.

...a humble pancake with minced meat...

...tasted heavenly with cheese...

...this one with mashed potatoes...

...and a free traditional music accompanied the supper...

...and it is Pancake Day over here...a day before Lent (40 days fasting period from luxury foods such as egg, milk, butter, cheese)...Christian tradition (normally Catholic or Ortodox), known as Mardi Gras of Fat Tuesday for French people, celebrated in Germany, Belgium, Portugal and a few other countries in Europe, India, Australia, Brazil and some other countries in Latin America, USA, Hawaii, Canada...

Signs of spring...

A walk through the field, clearly showed that a spring is coming soon...with purple and yellow blooms sprouting out from the ground, 

between the green grass...

...scented the air...

...the daffodils will bloom soon...

...new pink leaves before turning to envy green...

aarrrrggghhh...

spring is coming

the day is getting warmer

the little nightingale is chirping happily

and i just keep smiling...

Athens in Winter...

A winter in Athens is just like spring in Newcastle, full of life...took some pics 

along the way to Acropolis...

...always fresly smell, fresh air from Aegean Sea...

...something colourful around the corner...

...tangy satsumas...

Welcoming soon Spring....the promise...

...day getting warmer and daytime getting longer...

Quote

I have found out that there ain't no surer way to find out whether you like people or hate them than to travel with them...

Mark Twain

Yeah, that's true, revealing one's true colours...and it is the best to travel alone with your own freedom, freedom to learn, freedom to sexperience...whoooppps...freedom to experience...hehehehe, freedom to understand because, "he travels the fastest who travels alone" - Rukyard Kipling...

Cold and lonely...

It was snowing all day, snowing light and easy...

...the BBC field was covered by snow...

...a missing path...

...unlifted burden...

...a refuge under snow...

swirling little snowflakes

scattering on the cold ground

turning white carpet

Lonely Planet - ISTANBUL WHIRLING DERVISHES

Another great thing to do while in Turkey was watching the performance of sufi dance by whirling dervishes. The dance is associated with dervishes, the practice of the Mevlevi Order in Turkey. It is one of the physical methods used to reach religious ecstasy, founded by Mowlana Jalaluddin Rumi. Rumi was one of the great spiritual masters and poetical geniuses...

...the quartet for the night and the Gambus player cum singer has a great deep voice...singing throughout the show which took around one and half hours...in Arabic (the zikr) and Turkish (poems by Rumi)...

...the dance and songs much on the love of God...the music that accompanied the whirling from beginning to end ranged from somber to rhapsodical...chanting of poetry, rhythmic rotation, and incessant music induced a feeling of soaring, of ecstasy, of mystical flight...

...the rituals of the Whirling Dervishes are among the enduring as well as the most exquisite ceremonies of spirituality -  an act of love and a drama of faith. It possesses a highly structured form within which the gentle turns become increasingly vigorous as the dervishes strive to achieve a state of trans...

The day I've died, my pall is moving on -

But do not think my heart is still on earth!

Don't weep and pity me: "Oh woe, how awful!"

You fall in devil's snare - woe, that is awful!

Don't cry "Woe, parted!" at my burial -

For me this is the time of joyful meeting!

Don't say "Farewell!" when I'm put in the grave -

A curtain is it for eternal bliss.

You saw "descending" - now look at the rising!

Is setting dangerous for sun and moon?

To you it looks like setting, but it's rising;

The coffin seems a jail, yet it means freedom.

Which seed fell in the earth that did not grow there?

Why do you doubt the fate of human seed?

What bucket came not filled from out the cistern?

Why should the Yusaf "Soul" then fear this well?

Close here your mouth and open it on that side.

So that your hymns may sound in Where- no-place!

by

Mevlana Jalaluddin Rumi 

(died on December 17, 1273)

I silently moaned so that for a hundred centuries to come,

The world will echo in the sound of my hayhâ1 

It will turn on the axis of my hayhât

(Divan, 562:7)