Day 6 of Turkey--The Grand Bazaar

Hi everyone!

No egg update today.  I only see the doctor every other day for right now.  I will see him every day once it gets closer to egg retrieval.  When we had our first appointment, Dr Arici put our egg retrieval at probably the 13th, but since the eggs didn't grow very much last time it might be a day or two later. I'll keep you posted once I see the doctor in the morning.  Ok, so I'm beat so I'm turning this over to Glen to do the story telling for the day!!

For today’s outing, we might have been tempted to take a taxi from the hotel (their word for taxi is taksi - sounds the same), however it would probably be at least $100 (american) one-way.  So we opted for public transportation which was much more affordable.  That was a challenge in and of its self.  We paid ticket dispensers without knowing the language which was confusing.  After figuring out how to use the ticket dispenser with the right form of money and pushing the right buttons, we received tickets.  The tickets were in the form of plastic chips which looked like poker chips. We had to place these chips into a turn stile so we could enter the tram/metro station and get on our tram.  In the end, we now are familiar with how to get around town.  The biggest challenge now is getting to the point where we can use public transporation  from our hotel, since our hotel is so far away.  Seyhan has been very helpful in providing a shuttle for us to get from the hotel to the point where we can use public transportation.  We really have appreciated that because it has saved us a lot of money.

Today we went to the Grand Bazaar with the other couple. It was an amazing experience.  Seyhan, our international patient coordinator, arranged for a shuttle to take us to the sea bus port.  Istanbul is split by a river called the Bosphorus.  They call the two different sides of Istanbul the Europe and Asia side.  We are on the Asia side.  So we had to take a sea bus, which is like a big boat/ferry, to get to the European side.  Then we had to catch a tram to the Grand Bazaar.  

The Tram was really cool.  We drove through the "old" town (on the European side).  On the Tram, there were several stops and along the way, there was a lot of cool things we could see.  We saw a few mosques, and interesting looking buildings, McDonalds, Burger King, KFC, and then a bunch of their shops and banks, etc.  It was very fun and interesting to see.  Then in some parts, the tram was so close to the shops and buildings we could reach out and touch people standing there in line for the shops - and/or we could almost reach out and touch the walls also.  It was close, almost like an alley way in a few of the areas through the city.  It even went over one of the bridges over the Golden Horn (waterway).    

The Grand Bazaar is HUGE!!!  The building is many city BLOCKS wide and has tons of corridors.  It's like a maze in there!  It has at least a thousand merchants selling stuff.  Canton pales in comparison to the Grand Bazaar.  It's basically the same stuff like pottery, carpets, scarves, lamps, etc.  But it's still awesome!!  We had a good time looking around and we even bought a few things.  You definitely have to haggle to get a good price, but it was fun.  Most of the merchants were very nice and accepted  NO the very first time, except we saw one merchant chasing a blonde tourist because she didn’t buy something from him.  He was following her quite a while.  I have yet to know where (if ever), he stopped following her.  LOL. 

Oh yes, there was one experience, we must not omit.  Just shortly after we entered the Grand Bazaar, a merchant was standing in the middle of the aisle-way posing as a shopper.  He proceeded to guess where we were from, asking us in English – “Are you from Texas”. With a completely baffled look on our faces we answered, Yes, we are!   We later thought, it must have just been a lucky guess because nothing on us said Texas and I wasn't wearing my cowboy boots. LOL We figure that when he sees an American he probably guesses them to be from one of three states, California, Texas, New York. These are the most populated and the odds are high that someone would be from one of these states.   He got lucky when he guessed right for us.  After his introduction, he then tried to get us to go visit his shop which was way off the beaten path.  There were four of us, so I knew he was potentially trying to scam us in some way, so I proceeded with caution – however the other 2 in our group were kind of leading the way so Staci and I followed.  So it took a while to get to his stall, but along the way we saw many other merchants and what they had to offer so it was not a wasted journey.  He was a pretty funny guy, very humorous.  Of course, he said “you must buy something” – at least one thing from me.  Then he said, after you buy something from me, I will then show you the best place to eat “in the Grand Bazaar”.  He claimed to say that even George Bush and Michael Jackson had been in the Grand Bazaar to shop and he had seen it for himself.  LOL.  It was entertaining.  He actually asked us “would you like to see some tiles?”   Tiles, we later found out was his ceramic shop of bowls, and coasters and stuff like that, all allegedly hand-painted.  There was lots of competition for him in the Grand Bazaar, so of course if didn't take us long to figure out, why he wanted to steal customers right away before they saw the competition since he was way off in the boon docks of the Bazaar.  We didn’t buy anything from him, and we didn’t eat where he wanted us to eat.  LOL.  He was very persistent.  Said we should have bought something because of his comedy.  LOL.  He made fun of us because we were “window shoppers”.   Hey at that point, we had just gotten there and we had already told him we were "just looking."  Later in our shopping, we actually ran into that same guy a few more times!!  Which is crazy because this place is HUGE!!!  Each time we saw him coming, we would duck behind some carpets to avoid him seeing us.  LOL. One time we accidentally ducked into a store selling the exact same "tiles" as him.  We were like, Oh, crap!  What if he see's us in this other persons place and thinks we are buying from him instead!!!!  But thankfully we avoided him after that point and there were no further incidents. He just provided us with some real entertainment.

After the Grand Bazaar, we got on the tram to go back to the place where we arrived (in the morning from the ferry) - in the town Kabatas.  From the tram stop, we would need to go another mile or so to a hotel called The Marma, where Seyhan had gratefully arranged for someone to pick us up at 9pm.  So we took the tram back up to Kabatash, then we got on a metro/subway to take us north west (a mile), to complete the last jaunt to be in the place of pickup at 9pm.  Then we spent the evening in Taxim.  Some of the pictures will show some of the sights while we were there.  While we waited to be picked up, we looked at a few shops and had dinner.  There was also a nice park that we saw and there was an outdoor concert which we heard while we walked around.  

In Taxim, we also bought dinner there.  They have meat on a stick (or Kabob) - which they call Doner.  There is a picture of that.  They seemed to have a choice of chicken or beef.  The meat is stacked up on the metal skewers.  They have a choice of how the food is packaged.  For lunch we had it just sliced up on a plate with rice, etc.  At dinner, we opted for the burrito-style where they wrap it up with vegetables and a tortilla.  They oiled up the tortilla after they wrapped it all up and place it near a flame, long enough to char the tortilla.  Oh yea, we asked for the "spicy" version - which was supposed to have chiles with the vegetables.  It was very tasty, but definitely not spicy.  I don't think they really have spicy food here.  I prefer the burrito-style packaging of the meat - it tasted better than the other.  

Because we liked this experience so much, we will probably go back to the Grand Bazaar and Taxim again.  When we go back we will take a new couple we met. The new couple got here around the same time we did but they haven't had a chance to see any of the sights yet. Their names are Ebenezer and Vida, and he informed immediately that he was no Scrooge!  LOL They live in New York, but are originally from Ghana. They seem like a really nice couple and we look forward to getting to know them better. Tomorrow, all the couples are going on a boat ride together along with Seyhan down the Bosphorus River.  This should be SO awesome and we should get some really good pictures!!

I bet y'all are wanting some pictures of the Grand Bazaar.  So here ya go!!!

On the ferry, we passed the "Prince Islands" - they are 3 small islands.  This a picture of one:

On the ferry, these are some pictures of the European side of Istanbul. You will notice there are some mosques:

Bridge Over the Bosphorous River:

A random mosque right after getting off the seabus at Kabatash:

Then these are a collection of pictures taken at the Grand Bazaar.  They all show different merchants and the products they were selling.   The architecture of the building was interesting to, so pictures may only show that as well:

(above - lights / lanterns)

(above - this is a funny one).  Does anyone know what this merchant is pointing at?  if you can't figure it out - scroll down for the answer

Then we have some pictures in Taxim (in the evening)

(above - these were some soaps in the shape of fruit, etc.)

(park in Taxim - near the shops and concert)

(above - this was interesting - in front of concert.  Concert stage not shown.  The vendor was selling popcorn and cotton candy.  Not sure what the purpose of this architecture is for.)

(above - this is how they sell their meat - "Doner" in shops on the side of the road.  This is what we ate for lunch and dinner today)  There are several of these adjacent to each other.  There were 4 of these shops literally next to each other and then Burger King on the end (in Taxim).   Near the Grand Bazaar they had 2 or 3 next to each other as well.

Right before 9, immediately before we were being picked up - we went on a scavenger hunt to find Turkish ice cream, which is stringy like taffy.  The other couple said they knew where to look, so we started walking down a street.  This is a picture.  There were lots of people:

Their ice cream was interesting.  It was good, but interesting.  We had 3 flavors - chocolate, vanilla, and lemon.  They were pretty good.   Remind us to post about the ice cream experience it's getting really late and we have spent over two hours on this blog. LOL  It takes a long time to up load all the photos one at a time to the blog!

Oh, and the answer to what he is pointing at.  Staci was taking most of these pictures with her iphone today. In most places it was ok to take pictures, but I guess at this place it was not. Because when she brought the camera down she noticed that he was pointing at a picture of a camera with a big red X over it!  So  she accidently took a picture of a guy telling her not to take a picture!  LMAO

Thank you for your thoughts and prayers.

Glen & Staci