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Published: September 11th 2012
Plan was to spend the holiday in New York- but we ended up spending it partly in Dubai and then in Turkey. An airline employee (who avails discounted tickets) would well understand the reason without further explanation- so I’ll leave this insider’s joke to that!
Our first stop was in Istanbul. We took the Metro service from airport to our hotel in Sultan Ahmet. We had spent 4 Lira each and had to change train once whereas we might have to pay over 100 liras had we taken a taxi from airport.
We had booked our stay at Star Holiday Hotel- which was 2 minutes walk from the Sultan Ahmet metro stop, 3 minutes walk from Hagia Sophia, 7-8 minutes’ walk from the Blue Mosque and less than 10 minutes walk from Topkapi Palace and 15 minutes walk from Grand Bazaar. The hotel was right on the main road, had small but comfortable rooms, had a good buffet breakfast on terrace and had friendly staff. While having breakfast in terrace, we could see the blue mosque and the sea at the horizon. The hotel is placed in the major tourist spot and so there was abundance of street side
café’s, sweet shops, travel agencies and souvenir shops around the hotel. I could not have wished for a better place to stay in!
We had reached our hotel in the afternoon. So after eating traditional donar kebab from a café, we went to Grand Bazaar. Topkapi Palace and Hagia Sophia close around 5 pm and Grand Bazaar at 7 pm, that was the best option. On way to Grand Bazaar we passed lots of street side shops selling gorgeous Turkish lamps, traditional small tea glasses, Turkish scarves, Turkish jewelry and many small local handicraft items. We went inside and checked the price so that we can bargain properly at Grand Bazaar.
Turkey is a crazy place for bargaining- and I feel a tourist will never win with the local vendors. No matter how much we managed to pull down the cost (we brought it from over 600 Euros per person to less than 300 Euros per person!!), I was sure that someone else might be able to bargain yet more.
Grand Bazaar is like traditional Middle Eastern souks. With arched entrance, stoned floors, the old vibe, long narrow corridors with shops lined in both sides, darkened inside,
presence of Arabian style hookahs and textile merchants- it felt just like a souk from any other Arabian country. From my previous experience of visiting souks in Doha or Dubai, I had thought that Grand Bazaar would be cheaper with more collection. But Grand Bazaar was more expensive that outside street shops. Though we ended up buying several Turkish lamps and candle holders from Grand Bazaar because of huge choice, I did not buy anything else from there and went to street shops for buying scarves. A textile merchant asked for 50 liras for one simple pashmina and came down to 15 liras when I walked out of that shop- I bought a similar pashmina for 10 liras from the street.
Spice Bazaar is similar to Grand Bazaar but with lots of colorful spice shops. What kind of tea do you want? Rose flavored? Apple flavored? Lemon flavored? Orange flavored? Love tea? Hate tea? Your imagination would fall short in comparison to the choices available. All the scents blend together and give spice bazaar and unique aroma and pleasantly tantalizes the nostrils.
By the way, I made up the “hate” tea!
After our desire of buying the
View from hotel terrace
Blue mosque and the sea in the horizonabsolutely gorgeous Turkish lamps and teacups were satiated, it was time to eat – yet again. There were many choices- we settled for a traditional Turkish Cuisine café. The highlight of our dinner was the baklava that Siam got from a pastry shop founded in 1864! Turkish people indeed love sweets- their desert shops are one of a kind. Nowhere else have I seen so many verities of desert, availability of desert shops every few minutes and people eating desert- and only desert- any time and all the time!
In most countries we travel to, we face a trouble of appropriate place for praying our salaat on time. Istanbul presents a refreshing change. There were mosques on every direction, within 5 minutes walking distance in between. The Ottoman architecture is spectacular- with flat domes and tall minarets. Almost all mosques are built of grayish marble and the interior is spectacular. They have beautiful carpets, low hanging lamps and beautiful tiled walls with Quranic scriptures painted in golden. Details and photos of the mosques will appear in my next blog.
Istanbul is not a flat city- the streets go up and down. After a long flight and a lot
of walking in quite warm weather, we were tired. Though I wanted to stay outside longer, sitting at the small park in front of the Blue Mosque, I had to sleep early to kick start my second day in Istanbul early. I drifted away to sleep that night listening to the live instrumental music coming through the window from the side street and public applause and high pitched laughter of the happy diners!
While I write the blog, my hubby Siam Wahid does the photography. Below is the link for his Turkey Flicker photo stream-
http://www.flickr.com/photos/siamwahid/sets/72157631368977716/
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Janedukey
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middle east sweets
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