So, the next morning after the exciting belly dancer/bland food show we embarked on a morning boat cruise and tour of Istanbul. The first hour we spent at the spice bazaar, looking around and we even found some interesting new things for the store. My parents continued on their search for the special Turkish glass tea set for their apple tea (which is pretty much heated up apple cider.) They still didn’t have any luck, but our negotiating skills got better with practice. The boat cruse went up and down the side of Istanbul, which connects Istanbul with a sea on each side. The tour took us all along the water and we got to see the very affluent part of Istanbul…but from a safe distance of the water and not on land so we don’t bother the rich folks :p. Our tour guide along this trip was pretty good, he was doing the tour in both English and French.
After the boat tour, we went back to our hotel area for lunch, and had another bland meal (I hope it’s just our bad decisions and not Turkish food in general that’s bad.) We had some fried anchovies which were the only thing from the meal that was memorable. Even as my uncle ange noticed, the SALT wasn’t salty, they must have thought we were crazy because of the amount of salt we were putting on the food, but it was necessary.
After the lunch we went to a hidden fabric, pillow case, blankets shop …that literally was really hidden with our new German Turkish friend Attila. To get to it, you had to go down an “alley” that was about a meter wide. Mom tried to negotiate a better price on some pillowcases, but our practice didn’t work on the owner and we left empty handed. I think mom is better off going to the Ralph store with Maddie and get all the pillowcases she needs at 75% of. Much less stress than haggling.
After that store, we went to the Grand Bazaar to check it out, because everyone says you have to. Lets just say we weren’t really impressed with its offerings. There was five or six stores that were copied all throughout the Bazaar, and they all wanted to negotiate the price. By the end of the day, we were all pissed off at having to negotiate everything with these guys and we didn’t really buy anything, because negotiating gets tiring after a bit.
After the Bazaar, we decided to go make our way back to the hotel so we could rest for a bit before going out for dinner with Attila later that night. The dinner was fantastic, and we had great company and good food…for the first time in Istanbul. After dinner we pretty much passed out at the hotel, and got ready for the exciting early morning bus ride back to Greece!
Our bus ride was a bit of a pain in the ass, the bus broke down in Turkey and we had to spend 45 minutes waiting for it to get fixed. The bus driver and the attendant were walking back from the store in the gas station with different sized wrenches…it was a bit sketchy. The restof the trip back was pretty uneventful, except for the driver letting all the Turkish people off at their little villages but when the Greeks (us) ask to get off in the village, he doesn’t do it. It was a bit frustrating but still a great trip and we didn’t let that ruin the trip and had a great time overall…just a bit short!
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