The girls had a major foreign food breakthrough today and devoured red snapper. Ahh, the magic of travel. We took a boat across the Bosphorus from the Europe side to the Asian side to the Rigel Restaurant. They are known for preparing snapper encased in salt. There is no menu. You pretty much get what you get.
The setting couldn’t have been lovelier. Cool summer breezes and a gorgeous view. To add the the authenticity, we were surrounded by chain-smoking Turks. On the upside, all the locals we meet simply adored the two little girls. Note to self–traveling with two muchins in pretty dresses makes everyone 100x friendlier.
We’re back in Istanbul after 4 days in Cappadocia. The Kempinski was great the first two nights. We returned today for a one night stay. Sad news–we have a wee room and they forgot to set up the girls bed, a bummer when returning at 10pm with two exhausted kids and having to try to tell housekeeping (we’re not so strong in Turkish) that we need cots for the girls. But the infinity pool is enormous. So that would bring us back.
MUST-SEE FOR KIDS: Today we went to Miniaturk. Kind of like LEGOLAND in that they have shrunken models of all the highlights of Turkish architecture. In a few hours you can get all the highlights and the information is available in 5 languages. The girls loved the bouncy house, playgrounds and the train ride that goes around the park. We ate some awesome spiced potatoes on a stick. Yum. Give yourself 2 hours here–more if your kids are old enough to visit the go cart track next store.