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Published: August 13th 2008
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We left Sugar Beach Club and the tour at 2:30 in the morning (!) for a one hour ride to the airport and a one hour flight to Istanbul. We got in around 6, left our luggage at the guesthouse, and then had about 6 hours to walk around until the rooms were ready. We walked through the cisterns -- a huge underground complex with pillars and walkways, and a few fish. Its quite interesting to walk though, although Silmarien is still confused about where the "underground sister" went.
After wandering around somewhat aimlessly for a bit longer, we decided to find someplace to eat, which we did, a block from our guesthouse. I had pistachio kebab, which is now my favorite Turkish food. They serve a huge piece of flatbread, baked in an oven until it blows up like a balloon, as an appetizer. Finally we stumbled back to the guesthouse and met the hotel manager, who seems very young -- I think managing a guesthouse must be a huge responsibility. But she is very nice and helpful and speaks both English and Japanese fluently, and maybe other languages as well. Needless to say we crashed and slept for
several hours. Since it was almost dinner when we got up, we walked down through the oldtown, out one of the few gates through the old Sea Wall, accross several lanes of fast traffic (yes, there is a light) to the sea. Then we walked along the sea just watching everything: younger men selling hazelnuts from handcarts; older men selling tea in glass cups, to be drunk at little plastic tables set up with chairs; lots of men of every age (and one older woman in a headscarf) fishing, buying lures from boxes set up every few hundred yards; kids on the playground and on the exercise equipment; a few people swimming out from the rocks; one man playing some sort of stringed instrument and singing. We stopped at the exercise equipment and tried a few, and Jershon got some chinups in. Afterwards we walked back through the gate and had dinner at a little place with fabulously painted plates along the walls. And we went back and crashed once again.
The next morning we headed for the Grand Bazaar, or Kapali Carsi. I asked Miss Elif (our hotel manager) if we would get lost without a guide, and
she said Oh no, just go to the second Tram stop. I said I meant would we get lost inside, and she said, Oh, of course, but we would find our way out again. So we went. Unfortunately I forgot my camera and had to go back. It was only a couple of blocks, but long enough for Art to get cornered by an aggressive and over-priced shoe-shine man. His shoes do look beautiful.
I thought the Grand Bazaar would be like the Suk in Fes, but it wasn't really. The Suk is a maze of tiny streets, probably built incrementally over time, whereas the Grand Bazaar seems to have been built as a planned covered market -- originally wood and canvas, but now brick and plaster. It is made of a series of square building surrounding courtyards, so what the visitor sees is a fairly regular grid of wide passageways, with small shops on either side and a painted, arched ceiling. The other major difference is that the Suk still contains multitudes of working craftmen -- I think about 200 different craft guilds, and you can see many kinds of crafts going on, whereas the Grand Bazaar contains
only the finished products, and has a smaller range of crafts (lots of rugs, jewelry, scarves, and leather). We did find 2 very interesting shops, one a felter, and one a dollshop which turned out to be owned by an American expat from Virginia who has lived in Turkey since 1973, called the Crazy Lady's Place (Delikizin Yeri). The felt hats were beautiful but much too expensive for me ($200 +), but we bought some small felted pieces, a sketchbook of Istanbul, and a doll for Silmarien (plus some presents...) Silmarien now has 2 Turkish dolls whom she has introduced to each other and who sleep together. They are named Bebek ("doll") and Delikiz ("crazy lady"). We also got fresh grapefruit juice, which was delicious (unlike the fresh pomagranate juice the next day, which was NOT).
Actually we didn't get too lost in the Bazaar, because of the grid and the street signs. We did get lost as soon as we got out, because the streets around teh bazaar are sort of an extension of the market -- but just consumer goods, rather than crafts. They are narrow and twisty and nameless. Eventually we found a way out and
it felt like taking a deep breath.
After lunch we walked (and walked and walked) along a main road to find the old Roman Aquaduct, which we finally saw from a playground on the grounds of a mosque. We walked through it and discovered that Istanbul (less ancient) continued on to the towers at teh horizon, so we walked back in again. On the way home we went a different route through squares and pedestrian areas and fed teh pigeons outside of a different mosque. There are a couple of bird ladies there and for whatever coin you give them, they press metal tray of birdseed on you. Needless to say Silmarien loved that. A couple of little boys wanted to shine Art's shoes but he told them No -- unfortunately the entire time we fed the pigeons they followed us saying "Hajji, hajji, shoeshine, 1 lira only". We tried no in English and Turkish, and when we started to ignore them they tried to scare away the pigeons. Well, somewhat frustrating, but this is the worst we've been hassled on the whole trip, which is pretty amazing.
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