Edirne for a couple of days

Good morning/evening.
 
I have had a couple of days away, not a relaxing break as we had a lot to do in a short time but a nice change of scenery. We went over the border to Turkey to the city of Edirne (pronounced eh-deer-neh) . It is a reasonably large city with a population of around 157,000 people compared to around 67,000 in our closest city in Bulgaria. Edirn is close to the borders of both Bulgaria and Greece and is full of historical and cultural monuments.
 

 
 It is the chief city of the Marmara region of northwest Turkey. Edirn was at one point the capital of the Ottoman Empire, and continued to be an imperial retreat, with many magnificent mosques. I find that there is quite a contrast of cobbled side streets selling almost anything and high end shopping malls.
 

 
 
 
Then you have the bazaars leading to mosques, you will definitely find Turkish delight here as well as towels, shoes and lots of sportswear.
 

 
Ekmek (Turkish for bread) is an absolute must when we go over, I don't know what is is but the bread is superb, then there are the delightful baklava, and some biscuit and dessert shops where everything is presented fantastically, again I can't help myself and have to buy a few.....
 

 
 
 
 
Edirne's economy depends on agriculture and you can buy some really fresh fruit and vegetables, the vegetable market is easy to find as there is a very ornate monument of fruit and vegetables, the fish market area has yep, you guessed it, a fish monument. In fact there are many statues all over Edirne, there is the wrestlers monument, the lady with grapes monument and probably many more I have not seen.
 

 
The last time we were in Turkey about a year ago the exchange rate was high, now it is even higher. The price of some things in Turkey are still a lot lower than here in Bulgaria so there were a lot of Bulgarians stocking up. The gold shops were busy with people exchanging their Lira for gold again, much like last year when we were there. As someone visiting though, the cafes and restaurants were busy, as were the shops, probably due to the new finance ministers changes, after five years of high inflation, loss of foreign investment, and growing budget deficits, things may be looking up but even if Turkey reaches the new targets for this year, it will still be in the top 10 countries with the highest inflation.
 
All in all we had a very nice couple of days away, it is always a plesant trip and as always, thank you for reading and please feel free to comment.

Pictures by me lol.