Istanbul - Grand Bazaar, Mausoleums, Spice Market

Today was truly what a "Europe Through the Back Door" day is supposed to be about. While I love Rick Steves travel philosophy, all too often I've been really disappointed with the content of his guidebooks. Why? I think mainly because he's, like, the number one Europe travel writer in the USA, which means everybody and their brother is trying to squeeze through the same little tiny back door at the same time. This is evidently not the case (at least not yet) with his Istanbul guidebook.

We spent the day doing the Old Town Back Streets self-guided walking tour (not as convenient reading it as the audio ones he has for Italy are, but still good). The first stop was a lovely cemetery and mausoleum. I thought I'd seen enough of this stuff on this trip already, but they decorate them up differently here. Lovely!

From Istanbul

From Istanbul

Then we saw the old column that is all that is left of the old Roman Forum.

From Istanbul

And then it was lunch and the Grand Bazaar. We weren't really expecting much of the Grand Bazaar, having read that it's become very touristy, with jewelry shops and souvenir stalls having displaced a lot of the sellers. With locals mostly preferring to shop across the Golden Horn in the New District., and with high rents having forced out most of the workshops. However, it was still really cool to be in the old bazaar building and to see and hear it all. In one section there were a bunch of guys standing around yelling into cell phones (it sounded like there was a fight going on), who are evidently the currency exchange. We dropped in at one recommended jewelry shop where we were invited upstairs to see the craftsmen at work. One was putting some final touches on a solitaire ring, and another seemed to be stringing together settings for something, an eternity ring perhaps? We didn't have our camera out for most of it as it is recommended that you keep your valuables out of sight and close to your skin in here.

From Istanbul

The best part was the gold smith we were directed to. One particular guy who apparently doesn't speak any English, and doesn't want any payment, but loves to show his craft off to tourists. When we arrived and were invited in he was placing a crucible on the fire and getting it all very hot. When it was ready, he put in a bunch of scrap gold (old jewelry mostly), and as that melted he added more. After a while he added a bunch of white powder, stirred it up, then seemed to remove a glob of the white powder. Then he poured the gold into a mould. After a minute, he cooled it in a couple of water baths, then polished it, then handed it to me to hold for a minute before it went to his customer. Seriously. Just like on TV. It was like 2 inches by 2 inches by 1 inch, and was really heavy. He said it was 18 kt. We asked how much that much gold was worth, but like I said above, he doesn't speak English. There was evidently more gold to be rendered than he could do at once (or maybe his customer wanted two pieces), so we got to see the process a second time. This piece of gold was smaller.

From Istanbul

From Istanbul

His next customer had some bent up silver wire which he put through a tool with a couple wheels and a bunch of grooves many times to make it into nice straight wire of a smaller gage and longer length.

From Istanbul

After this he wanted to see our book (we guessed: he was making a book-opening gesture with his hands and seemed pleased when we showed him the Rick Steves cover on our iPod Touch), then suggested that we get tea at the little teashop across the alley from his shop, and watch the backgammon game outside. I guess he must have paid for our tea because the teashop owner refused payment from us. They play backgammon really fast here, maybe 4x faster than Josh and I play. And we play pretty fast. It reminded me of watching Grant and Adam playing speed chess at Mudd.

I didn't see this part, but evidently one of the guys made some gestures to Josh at me that seemed to be about me being pretty, followed up a big thumbs up. We got this from the guy selling tram tokens the other day too. And here I thought I was the only woman in the city who wasn't some exotic beauty. Or maybe it's just that I let my hair and elbows show...

From the Grand Bazaar, we moved on to a couple mosques that were kind of small and unimpressive compared to the Blue Mosque yesterday. And a third that was supposed to be very nice and we had a really hard time finding, but turned out to be closed for renovations.

Finally we went to the Spice Bazaar, which is kind of like a smaller version of the Grand Bazaar that specializes in spices... and generally in selling stuff to tourists of a more home and bath variety. We also stopped to pick up some souvenirs. After all, we'll be going home very soon!

From Istanbul

Josh thought I looked so good in the scarf that he had to try it on. Doesn't he look like a man who isn't afraid of anything?

From Istanbul