My mom is of the mind that waking up should happen like a heart attack; quick, painful, and sometimes fatal. After writhing about and shrieking because the sun was in our eyes, my sister and I managed to sit upright and eat our delicious breakfast. It was quite big and made up of such exotic delicacies like...waffles. I don't know why but India is the only place where Mina and I absolutely crave waffles. Since we were smart ladies, we'd put our breakfast order on the door for room service before falling asleep at 7 am (my dad was impressed with our efficiency. No nambying about for breakfast for us no, we sleep and wait until the food comes to us to wake up), so food came with the suspiciously chipper woman we like to call Anne. Say it with me: ahn-ney, it means mom in Turkish. Our lovely mother has the ability to walk and shop and climb and run until we're begging for mercy and yet, she'll keep going like an extremely smug Turkish Energizer bunny. Smug because she can basically run circles around us. Long after we admit defeat, my mom will still be raring to go. And so we began the day as such, trying to keep up with our Anne.
We went to Shantushti, a shopping center near our hotel, and to the Crescent Mall where I got the most colorful tunic. I fell in love with it and I don't have the best picture of it yet but I've worn it in Istanbul in colder weather and now I have to figure out a way to make it work for summer without seeming too costume-y. Mina gave up first and returned to the hotel but my mom and I went on to the Khan Market where we had a late lunch and returned, arms loaded down with bags, in the afternoon.
For dinner we had south Indian cuisine which was delicious but did not quite measure up to our high Indian food standards. I'm not kidding. We, as a family, have left many staring at us in awe and probably horror at the amount of Indian food, spicy or spicier, we can inhale and ask for more. We cut off waiters when they try to explain dishes and amuse them when we ask for dal makhani if it's not on the menu. We were in India for ten days last year and when my dad admitted he needed a break from the food, my sister and I kept it up all the way through (and the fact I threw up all the way back home to Istanbul had nothing to do with this. It was the fucking fish and chips that made me sick, not the Indian food). But anyway, though the sauces erred more on the lemongrass side (I am not a fan) the meal was good and we were soon back at the Oberoi completeing our Indian tradition of watching the Disney channel before passing out. We also caught the tail end of what looked like Indian Idol. Too soon (4 am) we were up and off to a city none of us had been to before, Jodhpur.
Close up of the front of my new tunic.
No comments:
Post a Comment