A Team from Istanbul Came to Play Here

That's the explanation one of my Turkish buddies gave to the official at the rec office when he was trying to get the lights turned on for us. With it getting dark around 4:30, we don't have much time to play ultimate anymore. But that's beside the point. The point is, friends from Istanbul came!!!

What a great host! I wasn't at the bus station when they arrived and made them wait as I took pictures from across the street.
Some of the gracious people from Turk Kasi came down for a little Southern hospitality last weekend. They wanted to see some of the sites of the Mediterranean coast and get a taste of why this area is, according to people more qualified than myself, the culinary capital of Turkey.

We took the first day to see the city of Adana. Some great friends were having an open house and we got some good food there before heading out on the town. There's really not a whole lot going on in this town, but I tried to make it as interesting as possible. We saw the Stone Bridge, built by the Romans a long time ago. It's amazingly long for a Roman bridge and is, for the most part, still structurally the same as when it was first built. From the bridge, you can see the new and large mosque and the Hilton, both built by the same man (and both bear his name), which stand opposite each other on the shores of the Seyhan River.

He gives the Adana tour a big, bronze thumbs up!
From there we glimpsed some of old Adana, including the Big Clock, a clocktower built in the 1800s that serves as a symbol for the city. It is ironic to me that this clock would be on the city emblem when it doesn't even keep time correctly anymore. We saw an old church built by the Crusaders that is now a mosque along with the Catholic church in town.

"Old Adana" could use a fresh coat of paint.
We also spent a few minutes in the ethnography museum (which is also an old Crusader church). Unfortunately, I found one more English word that I have a hard time pronouncing. Why exactly do we change pronunciation so much!? (ethnography-ethnographic, or photograph-photography)

The gang checking out old clothes, tools, weapons, and some interesting under garments from days gone by.
But I saved the best stop for last. For dinner, we had an Adana kebap from my favorite new place. For the equivalent of about $6, you get a wide assortment of salads (lettuce salad, tomato salad, cucumber and yogurt salad, raw onions with spice, grilled onions and tomatoes, and fresh mint and parsley), a nice, tall, frosty mug of ayran (think salty buttermilk), and an Adana kebap (which is something that you will just have to taste for yourself). Not only were they blown away by the taste, but coming from Istanbul, the price really just caught them off guard. The place we went to was just your average, run of the mill, kebap place. The price was middle of the road. But a meal of equal taste and quantity would easily cost you twice as much in Istanbul. I was so proud of my city. We found some baklava and made our way back here, to my apartment, for some tea and conversation. It made me so glad to have these friends here, in my apartment, sharing my life. It was nice to relax with some people my age and have some fun. It was a good first day, and things just got better. (More to come...)