The Grand Bazaar and the rest of Istanbul Day 1

After seeing the mosques, we were excited to head to the Grand Bazaar. On our way there, a "tour guide" man we ran into by Hagia Sofia wanted to also tell us about the city's architecture (what he studied in college), and take us to his carpet shop. Let me tell you... this guy was a jack of all trades! We went and he kept making jokes about this stuff that is similar to carpet called "kilim". I believe it went something like "want some kilim? no no, we wont kill him. or her." suuuuuper clever, sir. Anyway, he pointed us in the right direction of the bazaar and we headed that way.

Nikola warned us how huge this place was, but even with his advice of how to get in and navigate around, I was still overwhelmed by how big it was and how many vendors were trying to call us over to look at what they had to sell (when most of the time it was also sold in the very next store). We had a good time and everyone was asking where we were from and enjoying interacting with us. We came in with lists of what we wanted to buy, but we still couldn't help looking at all of the beautiful things even if there was no way we would walk out of there with them. Each "store" was SO tiny so they literally had merchandise from floor to ceiling. Everything looked so ornate and exotic and I wish I could have taken it all home, but things like the pottery and lanterns would have been impossible to lug back to the states.

Look how beautiful this stuff is and then imagine being thrown into a maze where each store had something usually hand made by the person who worked there or his family.

the lanterns and tea sets were awesome. i wish i could by tons of these lamps but definitely not practical

turkey is known for its pottery, and you can see from this picture how nice it is

everywhere we turned there was a store selling tons and tons of scarves

We were pretty successful haggling the prices down to what we thought was reasonable and we got a majority of our gifts in there. We still had some shopping to do, but we thought we could find some other things around the city. I found a gift from a street vendor earlier in the day and wanted to go back and buy it, but on the way Lauren found a gift for someone so we stopped. A man said "for free, pay with a kiss". This was a little creepy, but we ignored it. He was just joking around with us as we were there and asked if we would like to see some carpet in his store (I swear EVERYONE hear works at a carpet store). Anyway, it was around the corner so we went and that was quite the experience. He never wanted Lauren to talk and yelled at her when she talked. Then he proceeded to give me "special prices" for everything in his store. I told him many many times that I was not interested and did not have money, but he was determined to sell me something. He shouted down the window and tea was brought to us, so we sat and enjoyed his little spiel for a little while before deciding it was definitely time to get out of there. We literally RAN out because he started to get a little weird toward the end demanding that we buy a carpet or a pillow. They were nice really, but what am I going to do with a rug when I don't even have a home. We'll just chalk it up to an interesting experience. 

We headed back to the hostel just for a second and then went to get dinner. We were told about a little street that "you can't miss" with tons of little cafes and restaurants. Well leave it to me and Lauren to get completely turned around and follow the wrong streets despite people giving us directions and drawing it on the map. Anyway, the good news of this story is that we ended up stumbling on it anyway, and on our way home we actually found the street we should have been walking down. At dinner we had a traditional meal which had meatballs, spicy meat and bread, and some beans and hummus. We had been going going going for a solid day so we went back and went to sleep.