Man Cannot Live by Phyllo Dough Alone

.......but I can!!

Now, I've eaten a lot of good pastries in my time (and come back from a semester in France a good 20lbs heavier for it), but nothing, I mean, NOTHING beats the baked goods here.

I first noticed this in a cafe my second or third night when I ordered my meal (kebab anyone?) and out popped this basket of AWESOMELY baked bread. Fresh baked, too. It was just gooey enough so that you knew it was fresh, but just firm enough to not be gross. It was like super fluffy focaccia, and it was perfectly - PERFECTLY - golden.

So of course I gobbled that up and registered that, hey, I should come back here for the bread alone! (The kebab was....O.K.) But, I try to make a point not to frequent the same place too many times when I'm on my own because hey....why waste my time going back to the same old thing when there are so many NEW things to try?

But then it happened the next night, at a different restaurant. And the next.

And then I found the mouthwateringly wonderful bakery/cafe around the corner from my hotel. I had a doner there and the bread almost made my pants fall off. It was that good.

After sitting through an entire meal (again, O.K.) watching the crowds come and go from the bakery below, I decided to dawdle over the pastries and see what I could find.

Sweet mother of pearl, I still can't get over it. I had to tear myself away with no less than THREE types of baklava (cheese, pistachio and walnut - the walnut was the best because it had juuuust the riiight amount of honey. Yum!) and a huge slice of what I thought was pumpkin cake (but turned out to be graham cracker cream cake - double yum!) Then tonight, I went back again and had a filo-dough shepard's pie.

I don't CARE if I come home 40 lbs overweight with a moustache, this stuff is amazing! In fact, I think I might just buy a whole case of it and roll around in it on my bed before I go home next week.

I'm sure the cleaning lady would love that!

I have to go now, my mouth is watering so much I'm at risk of damaging my computer.....also, I think I still have some of that graham cracker cake lurking around.....