Turkey Day 7

Monday, today we visited the Aladdin Tepsi Mosque.  As you can see from the picture below the pillars are from the Roman period.  No doubt at some point in time the lined some Roman road in the area, and they were recycled and used in this building.  We stopped in a couple of other mosques on our way to the Mevlana Museum.

The Mevlana Museum is home to the Whirling Dervishes.  Unfortunately we were not able to see a performance, they are on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and we are leaving Tuesday morning.  The museum was really nothing that really exciting.  There was a display case with some hair from the beard of the prophet Mohammed, that is said that still put off a rose scent.  There were holes in the bottom of the display case for people to smell, I tried, no smell.

A man praying at a mosque in Konya

After a short rest we headed off to Silla, an old village on the outskirts of the city with a church that was dedicated to the mother of Constantine.  There were also cave dwellings and we saw what would have been a church carved in the mountain. Panaghia Church.

Then on a hill over a graveyard was the remains of still another church, The Tepe Church.  They say this church has healing powers.

On the bus to the city an old man just started talking to us.  We figureed he wanted to know where we were from when he looked and Shin and said, "Japon".  He also offered us an apple, I refused but Shin took one.

We decided to go to Konya Mutfagi for dinner.  They brought us menus, then a guy come over and said basically what he recommended we eat.  Over and over he said, "this is ....., this is...., this is .....  We just nodded and said ok not knowing really what we were getting ourselves into. Although we knew that we would be getting our favorite Cherry drink.

First was an Okra soup, tomato based with lemon that you squeeze on.  the required basket of bread and some yogurt were also brought to the table.  Next a cucumber and tomato salad, which also seems to be standard fare.  Stuffed grape leaves with yogurt sauce.  The main course consisted of 3 different Kebap's, lamb kebap, Tereet/ terete kebap in a yogurt sauce, and sebzeli kebap with an eggplant sauce.  

Finally 2 deserts, one was like a Japanese bean paste and the other a type of baklava, that was round and much bigger than what I expected. It all came to 21 TL a good bargain compared to the fast food meal that was 23 the night before.