Turkey: Istanbul: The Rest of the First Day

Besides Hagia Sophia and the Blue Mosque we also visited the Hippodrome, Topkapi Palace, Egyptian Spice Bazaar, a tile store and a carpet store on our first day in Istanbul.

The Hippodrome doesn't really exist anymore so we don't have any pictures of it. It used to be a racetrack and sporting stadium but now it's just a big paved oval with a big obelisk from Egypt in the middle of it. Interesting to walk around once or twice but nothing picture-worthy.

We did buy some things at both the tile store and the carpet store. We bought a nice plate at the tile store (sorry I don't have a pic of it but if you come visit us you'll see it displayed on our shelves) and a new runner for our hallway at the carpet store. Turkish carpets are expensive!! It was really neat to go to the store, be led up to a room, be given tea and coffee, and then have carpet after carpet rolled out in front of you by 2 guys being barked orders at by the guy giving you the sales pitch. The guy giving me the sales pitch reminded me of my cousin Dave though and so I caved and bought a carpet in the end. I have to keep telling myself that it's an investment and we can always sell it for twice what we paid for it back in Switzerland. Here's Martin getting ready to sign the carpet so we know we got the right one when it arrives in Zürich:



The Topkapi Palace was neat but we only took a few pictures of the inner courtyards of it. We needed to get a nice picture of it from a distance so you can get an idea of the size of it. Back in the day 3,000 people lived in it which includes the sultan, his four wives, and his 300+ ladyfriends in his harem. What was interesting in the palace was that there were several rooms with religious relics (items belonging to Muhammed) and several rooms with jewels. There were entire baskets filled with emeralds and rubies in there and the second largest diamond in the world at 86 carats (known as the Spoonmaker's Diamond). It is rumored to have been found in a trash pile.

Anyway, on to the Egyptian Spice Bazaar. No shortage of fun things to look at, eat, and purchase here. No shortage of people trying to fit through the narrow walkways either.

Nuts:



Tea:



Turkish Delight! For those of you not familiar with it, it is kind of chewy like a gumdrop and it comes in all different flavors (cinnamon, mint, pomegranate, honey) and can be filled with nuts or covered with chocolate or coconut or powdered sugar:



Oh yeah and spices:



And, in some stalls near the spice bazaar, leeches! Apparently some people in Turkey (and some tourists who visit Turkey) still use leeches to cure medical ailments. Just seems crazy to me but what do I know.



Can you believe we did this entire day on foot? It was a long day but really all of these sites are fairly close to one another. And after all of our wandering around we headed to a nice fish restaurant for dinner. Fish are plentiful and delicious in Turkey since it's surrounded on 3 sides by water. We went to Turkey expecting to eat nothing but lamb and eggplant and ended up eating fish for half of our meals.