Sultan Tourist Hostel Istanbul

... to a mosque, and is now a museum. We were actually a bit disappointed (the scaffolding all over the place didn't help), but it was neat seeing huge medallions displaying the name of Allah next to mosaics of Mary and Jesus (the mosaics had been plastered over when used as a mosque, but have now been uncovered).

The same day saw us go to the Archaeological Museum (quite interesting parts to it), and then head to a less touristy part of town. Once there, we walked down Istikal ...

... last door on the traın if this trian was goıng going to İstanbul. His reply was merely "İstanbul" wıthout any head movement to ındıcate what he ment and ın a tone of voıce that was half way between "yes thıs train ıs goıng to İstanbul" and "are you crazy, what do you mean İstanbul". Then repeated the questıon "Istanbul?" emphısıng the last sylabul to ımply ı ...

Well, the fun had to come to an end at some point!  Breakfast was the usual-fruit, toast, coffee, olives, tomatoes, and cucumbers.  But that was beside the point as we were anxious to get to the spice market! We decided to take a taxi to save time and walking so there was more time for shopping!  It took less than 10 minutes to get there and the market was just coming to life as we arrived.  Most of ...

... it is mainly for tourists and therefore is expensive. She also said Turkish people generally go to bazaars in the morning (GB closes around 7). I will definitely have to visit some local bazaars and shops with her. In the meanwhile, I had to fulfill the obligation of visiting this famous tourist spot. We took the tram (tramvay) there, and I started seeing a number of westerners. Then we cautiously entered the place ...

... were very happy to be paid in American money. Oh, I have to mention that there are over 40,000 shops in the Grand Bazar so you can only imagine how big and busy this place is. I want to also mention that the Queen of Egland is here as well. Thank god we didn't get here yesterday as they closed the palace for 3 hours even though she only visited it for 20 minutes. I guess she has her own jewels to gawk at......LOL. Our ship was parked next to her ship ...

Coming back to Istanbul I had seen the major attractions but still had plenty that I wanted to do. I spent one full day exploring the Grand Bazaar and Spice Market. The Grand Bazaar is essentially a massive one-story shopping mall filled with everything you can think of - jewelery, carpets, belly dancing costumes, watches, clothes, etc. Each "street" of the bazaar has a collection of shops selling basically the same thing. The prices all start out ...

... where a gentleman was seated with a bb rifle and bb handgun. In the water was a string of balloons. I choose the handgun and quickly used my two shots to destroy two balloons. Yunus didn't fair so well with the handgun but took out two balloons with the rifle. Then we returned to the house to head to bed. On Monday we went to one of the world's oldest shopping malls - the covered bazaar. Stall after stall of shops filled with gold, pipes, coppper, traditional costumes ...