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Published: August 17th 2011
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Turkish Bath
I sent Will in with the camera but this is the only picture he came out with! Days 5 to 7
The days are starting to blur together and, surprisingly, we don’t have much time to update our blog between all the shopping and traveling, so we’re going update a couple days at a time from here out.
We made our way to the Blue Moss where the women had to cover themselves and the men had to wear pants in the 90 degree heat. The Blue Moss was quite a specimen and I said a couple prayers for loved ones and made some wishes. I’m not sure whether wisher or prayers held more weight here in the Blue Moss. Now I have to give it some time to see if my wishes and prayers come true. We also visited the Underground Cistern, where Indiana Jones was once filmed.
AM: Actually known as the Blue Mosque for the blue tile work inside the mosque.
In addition to the Blue Moss and the Underground Cistern, Ali got her toe nails done and I tried out a Turkish Bath. I like the idea of a Turkish Bath because I was looking for any way to get out of the heat. I didn’t get the full rub
down by the mustached men, but I did go in and “relax” in the bath for an hour or so. I quickly found out that the Turkish bath is really a sauna, so I just ended up sweating out all my water without my clothes on with a bunch of naked guys instead of sweating everything out while I walked the streets.
Next, we ventured over to Asia. Apparently Turkey is in Asia and Europe and it’s also in Eastern Europe and the Middle East. We headed over to Asia so that I could cross this continent off my list as I’m sure the part of Asia we saw is very similar to the rest of Asia. The food there was very good, but not as spicy as I expected.
Ali tried to find some belly dancing classes to pass the time, but the instructor took one look at us and then quoted a price they knew we couldn’t afford to make sure they didn’t have a bumbling Ali in their class. I think the price converted into U.S. dollars was around $1,000 for one day. We did stick around and watch the dancers to see what they
had and why they thought they were better than us. It turns out, they were much better than us and they even had a couple moves that called for the lady to quickly float around in a circle while the guy did some crazy Irish step dance.
The rest of our Istanbul trip consisted of shopping, more shopping, and to top it off, even more shopping. Ali found this place called the Grand Bazaar, where they sell the same exact thing in over 1,500 stores all bunched up next to each other. To top it off, they crammed thousands of people into this so called Grand Bazaar. After the Grand Bazaar, she then found this secret little alley way that opened up into this massive shopping strip that reminded me of the shopping in New York City. I kind of zoned out this part of the trip, but I do remember the coffees were very expensive, but Dominos Pizza saved the day with some quality food that we were actually able to hold down. My last comment is that I haven’t been in a bar or restaurant that has shown a baseball game yet, but apparently there must still
Grand Bazaar Entrance
They say everything is fixed price but that's such bullsh*t. be a ton of NY Yankee fans over here because I see Yankee hats and shirts being worn everywhere.
AM: We have hardly done any shopping with all of the historical sites there are to visit. The Grand Bazaar has been around since the 1400s and is one of the largest covered markets in the world. Out of 5,000 shops covering 60 streets, we didn’t buy a thing so that proves my point right there. If Will would post up in a Pub and let me out on my own there would have been some serious spending being done but he refuses because as much grumbling that goes on he actually enjoys walking around with me. And if our past dancing history counts for anything, the belly dancing instructor took one look at Will and decided it wasn’t worth him spinning into all the other dancers, knocking them over.
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