Return to Istanbul: A Room with a View and a Turkish Taco

I don't know if I paid extra for the view from my hotel room, but if I did it would've been justified.

Back in Istanbul for Round Two.

I flew in from Izmir's Adnan MenderesAirport, which is the airport for the Selçuk and Ephesus tourist magnets and found Istanbul's Airport decked out for Christmas.

Already! We haven't even had Nevada Day yet. Normally I would kvetch and carp about starting the Christmas season too far in advance, but I'm in a Moslem country, so any recognition of Christmas is welcome, even if it is more than two months ahead of schedule.

I am staying in the Doruk Palas Hotel this time around, which is in the Beyoğlu district of the Emekyemez neighborhood of the Galata area. Or so they say. This is the "New City" part of European Istanbul, north of the Golden Horn that separates the Old City (where I stayed two weeks ago) (yes, I've been on this trip that long) from the New City.

The room is small. Very small. New York apartment for someone not working for a hedge fund small. But the view is expansive. That's the Golden Horn Metro Bridge making a straight line for my hotel room. It doesn't collide with my hotel room because the metro line disappears into a tunnel before it would hit my hotel broadside. The enormous Suleymaniye Mosque is to the bridge's left.

I was hungry, having not eaten since the hotel breakfast in Selçuk. Luckily, this is the trendy nightlife part of town. And it's not just for tourists.

Now, when I travel, I like to eat local. All the cool tourists do. But, sometimes, occasionally, when I'm in a mood, I do like to try the country that I am visiting's version of Mexican food. Thus: Hey Döner!

I guess we could be trendy and call Hey Döner "fusion" cuisine. It's more like a culinary trainwreck of Mexican and Turkish cuisine, where a Mexican taco truck got driven into a Turkish bazaar. I got two tacos and a small order of onion rings. The tacos had chicken and cheese on a bread that was somewhere in between pita and a flour tortilla, but not quite either. And on the taco, in addition to chicken and cheese, was a very tasty spicy sauce, along with French fries (?) and pickle slices (??). Let's just say it was better than it sounds, primarily because the creamy hot sauce was awesome and the star of the taco show.