Now that the NoshNewYork blog is "back," I'm gonig to start with my visit to Istanbul during the summer of 2011. When I travel, there are a few activities I definitely try to plan: A food tour, a bicycle tour and, if possible, cooking classes. Istanbul is a perfect destination for this. For one thing, Turkish food is amazing... markets about... hotels now offer cooking classes, nkowing that there's a market for this... and a couple of guys - an American who lives in Iastanbul and an Israeli who used to but is still deeply involved - set up a company called Istanbul Eats, which offers wonderful, small group tours of the city. I stayed in the Sultanahmet area - very touristy, yes, but well located near the Blue Mosque, not far from Topkapi Palace, and close to the seat. I chose Hotel Sarnic, probably from Hotels.com, because of the price and the cooking classes. It turned out to be a great choice - wonderful people, good lodgings and an excellent cooking class, which lasted about four hours plus a rooftop meal of all the food we made. But I'm going to devote this blog entry to my food tour, because that came first. I don't know whether Istanbul Eats limits its groups, but there were just of us on our tour, mainly in the Beyoglu and Cihangir neighborhoods. We met at 9:30 AM and went through endless markets, finsihing at 3:30 PM. Then, because our group was so compatible, our guide, an American woman working on a Ph.D. in Istanbul, accompanied us back to an area not far from my hotel and took us to a great restaurant where we had wine and appetizers. Most fun of all, though, was that since she knew the people there, we got to go to the kitchen and see bread being baked. You can almost smell it! Here's a photos series of delicious Turkish bread being baked: