Day 22 Our second day in Istanbul
Today we decided to venture out on our own. On our last visit here, our visit to the Grand Bazaar was very short and we thought we would like to spend a bit more time exploring it. Established in 1461 it has over 60 streets and 4000 shops. It is claimed to attract between 250,000 to 500,000 visitors a day.
Now Google maps suggested the walk from our ship to the Bazaar would be around 42 minutes but since we were planning to spend a couple of hours exploring it and then we still had to get back to the ship, we decided to take the tram which runs past the Ocean terminal.
As we walked to catch the tram, a taxi driver said the tram wasn’t operating. I told Jeanette that he was just touting for business and we walked on for a while and caught a tram, rode three stops, hopped off and got totally lost.
A kind local, seeing us staring at our phone screen trying to reconcile a cross road that was on the map but didn’t exist in reality, gave us directions to the Bazaar, which worked.
As we walked , I noticed the street we were in was predominantly full of shops selling artist supplies, fine papers and framing services.
The next street we turned into was about a half kilometre long and both sides were solely dedicated to jewellery shops. I suppose in a city of nearly 18 Million people you can support specialisation like that.
Finally we made it to Gate No 1 of the Grand Bazaar.
To your right as you enter the Grand Bazaar, was an enormous and very beautiful mosque. I couldn’t get far enough back to get the whole of it in but this shot shows some of it.
Inside the Bazaar was a mass of heaving humanity. Unfortunately it is an enclosed space and since most of the shopkeepers smoke, our visit was not quite as long as we had planned.
As we were leaving I got this photo of a male tea lady doing his rounds of the shops.
We retraced our steps back to the tram stop where we had initially got off and boarded a tram back. This went for a while in the right direction then suddenly reversed course. By the time we fought our way thru the crowds to the exit we were three more stops into the middle of the old city.
Never daunted, we got off and caught another tram back but this too stopped at the place where our previous tram reversed and we were told by a kind local this was as far as it went. It turned out, as the taxi driver told me at the start, the tram to the Ocean Terminal wasn’t operating.
So we headed off on foot across the Galata Bridge which was packed with fishermen on both sides.
We had a lovely walk back along the waterfront where we came across this amazing glass sculpture of Apollo’s head which it is claimed weighs 12 tons so no chance of it being stolen.
We had a late lunch in a waterfront cafe watching the endless parade of small watercraft.
In the early evening, we stood on our cabin balcony sadly watching our ship pull away from the dock as twilight fell. This is a lovely city and the kindnesses we were shown by its citizens on a number of occasions made a deep impression on us.
Hardys’ Travels 