Thanksgiving in Istanbul

For the long Thanksgiving weekend, we decided to forego the traditional food-fest and celebration and instead get some traveling in.  So we spent our holiday getting up at 3:30 in the morning and flying to Turkey.  Not a bad deal, all things considered.  We got in mid-afternoon and took a taxi to our hotel in the Sultanhamet district, which is also known as "old" Istanbul. It was a very convenient location to stay as we were within walking distance of all the major sights.  After taking a few minutes at the hotel to catch our breath and regroup, we set out to begin exploring.

Since it was already pretty late in the day, we saved the major attractions for later and instead took the tram across the Bosphorus to the part of town referred to as "new" Istanbul.  First on the list was the Istanbul Modern, a  museum with a nice collection of modern art.  Mostly contemporary Turkish art, they have a rather stunning collection with a nice variety of themes.  A good way to kick off the trip!

Next up was walking along Istiklal Caddesi, or Independence Avenue.  Basically it's a walking street lined with all sorts of shops, restaurants, cafes, etc.  The guidebook refers to it as Istanbul's most popular promenade, and the amount of people there certainly confirmed that.  Despite the crowds, it was a lovely stroll.  We stopped at a little cafe for a non-traditional Thanksgiving dinner of chicken curry, pasta in a yogurt sauce, grilled vegetables, and rice pudding.  Not exactly turkey and mashed potatoes, but delicious nonetheless!  

Marostica

While out and about today running errands (aka Christmas shopping), we took a slight detour to check out the castle in Marostica.  This cute little village is famous for putting on a live chess game in the town square every two years.  It also, like many Italian towns, has a castle sitting on the hill.  And since we're turning into suckers for a good castle, of course we had to explore.

As you can see, it's a bit of a climb to get to the castle.  It is possible to drive to the top, but really, what's the fun in that?  You can also faintly see the chess board in the square behind me.

The way up to the castle was a cobblestone path that wound through the olive trees.  Quite a climb, but so pretty it was definitely worth it.

Luckily there was a spot partway up to take a break and drink some water.

Once at the top, we discovered a nice restaurant within the castle walls.  Aside from that, there really was no castle.  We walked along the wall and checked out the views, which were pretty spectacular from that high up.

In other news, Donovan and I are headed to Istanbul in a few days.  We decided that instead of eating turkey for Thanksgiving, we would rather just celebrate in Turkey.

Our Weekend + Soave Castle

I hope you all had a fun weekend!  It's been raining here the last few days, but despite the gloomy weather we still had a good time.  One of my friends from college and her hubby were visiting for a couple days so we had a blast showing them around our little corner of Italy.  On Friday we took the train over to Venice for a rainy stroll through the city.  The cooler weather was actually a nice change from the hot, crowded visits we've had before.  Really though, Venice is beautiful whatever the weather is!

On Saturday we explored a town that we've been meaning to stop at for awhile.  Soave is only twenty minutes down the road and is an adorable little town surrounded by vineyards.  It also has a pretty awesome castle up on the hill overlooking the valley.  We started off our time in Soave with a stroll up and down the main street before stopping for lunch in a delightful little trattoria.

As I said, the castle sits on the hill looking down over the town, so it requires a bit of a climb to get to.  Although after our delicious lunch, the extra exercise was not a bad thing!  The path leading to the castle was quite picturesque in itself.

We had a great time exploring all the little nooks and crannies of the castle.  The view of the valley was also incredible.  I would love to come back sometime on a clear day so we can get the full effect of the view.

Oh, and how funny is this little dog statue?  So cute!

Soave now holds a place in our list of top favorite towns to hang out in.  We'll definitely head back there, especially when our wine collection is getting low.  Gotta take advantage of living just down the road from some amazing wineries!

weekend recap

So I realize the weekend was awhile ago, but this week has kind of gotten away from me and I am just now sitting down to write about it.  Since Donovan got back from training late last week, we took it easy over the weekend and mostly just relaxed at home.  The guys had Monday off, and by then the cabin fever was definitely setting in, so we decided to take a drive and see where we ended up.

Our first stop was Asiago.  We liked it so much the first time we visited that we wanted to go again.  On our list to do this time around was visit the war memorial.  During WWI, Asiago was the site of one of the major battles between Austria and Italy, and they have a pretty impressive memorial set up.  However, we managed to go there on the one day of the week that it's closed, so we weren't able to walk all the way up to it.  I did get a few pics from the bottom though.

After our failed attempt at visiting the memorial, we stopped at a pastry shop and picked up some snacks.  The pastries were gone before I could take a picture, but this is the little piazza we enjoyed them in.

And then we were back in the car looking at the map and planning our next move.

We ended up taking a road that wound through the mountains and ended up in Trento.  We saw some really pretty fall colors, and although the view was blocked by trees most of the time we did get several glimpses of the mountains.  We even had to stop once because some cows were blocking the road.

It was nice to get out of the house for the day as well as see another little piece of the country!