Home at last

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On Monday we had a nice breakfast and walked along the promenade up to Gulhane park on the outside of the Topkapi Palace walls. Walking up the hills there were a few cafe's up the path with a few hundred tables overlooking wonderful views of the Bosphorus strait which connects the Sea of Marmara and the Black sea. Walking through the park there are several covered trellises with a bench where couples would be holding each other similar to a lovers lane idea. I suppose it is a private place where people can show their affection for one another as opposed to doing it in public which is not openly expressed here. We wandered up to the Topkapi Palace and spent an hour going through a very small portion of the grounds simply due to time constraints. There is so much to see in such a short time. We worked our way up to The Grand Bazaar and began our bartering with all the local vendors. Everyone is a carpet salesman and if your not looking for a carpet they will tell you of their brothers or fathers store which you must visit. The standard practice is whatever the price is you could usually settle on it for half of that. The vendors were no where near as aggressive as in Mexico and were quite fun to chat to as they had good english skills. They assume you are american but once the find out you are from canada the conversation shifts to a more personal and positive tone. I was looking for some turkish tobacco but was asked if I wanted hashish instead. Having visions of the movie The Midnight Express I politely declined. There are about 5000 shops in the Grand bazaar and we probably only saw a small portion of it as well. It is a maze and designed to keep you in there, similar to casinos in vegas. We picked up some souveniers and headed off to wander the streets some more. We came across a man standing on a stool on the main street yelling out what we found out to be anti-political warnings. Similar to a town crier. People just indicated to us he was crazy, it was entertaining none the less.
That rounds up our last day here in Istanbul
We woke up at 3am to catch our 6am flight to Franfurt and connection to Calgary and back home to Comox. All in all it was an experience to remember and would go back to Turkey in a heartbeat. I highly recommend visiting Istanbul and will return ther some day to see everything we missed.
i will post some pictures here and some more in the future as I collect more from others

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