Saturday, October 19th, 2013

Today we were in Istanbul, Turkey, a city of 16 million.  We went to the underground cistern, the Grand Bazaar,  and the Spice Bazaar and found most of the 16 million.  The three places, and the tram to get there, were unbelievably crowded.  We were told that they had been closed for five days due to a religious holiday until today. 

The cistern was built in the 7th century.  It was very dark, too dark for photos.  But even in the dim light, we could see all of the columns that had been repurposed from earlier Greek and Roman works.  The fish in the water were huge.  They looked like a cross between a catfish and a sturgeon.

The Grand Bazaar has over 4500 shops, so it is impossible to see them all, let alone find them all.  We do not remember it being so crowded in 2007 when we were last here.   Every shop has an owner or employee out in the aisles trying to entice us and other shoppers to stop and look at their wares.  One guy used the line "are you looking for me or just my shop".  It was funny.  If we looked at an item for more than a second or two, they were on us.  Especially the big ticket shops, carpets, leather coats, etc.  It was fun, but tiring after awhile.  We were able to find the shop where we bought a carpet last time.  Our salesman then is now a travel agent, but we had a nice chat with new employees.

We are going to attempt to post this with two photos.  One is of the ceiling of the Grand Bazaar and is to show how clean the place is.  The other is of the Spice Bazaar and is show how crowded it was.  An amazing place.  We had a great time today.

Colleen and John