Istanbul day 3 – Spiceworld

Even with our late night last night, we were able to get up an actually sample the breakfast put on by the hostel. It was a nice light breakfast of cucumber, tomato, watermelon, eggs and bread, perfect and hydrating for the warm weather. It was a beautiful view for the meal looking out over the bay of Istanbul.

We got prepared and decided to head to the spice market. Once again, I was on mapping duties, and thought I had worked out a good route. We were again approached by someone who tried to get us into his family’s floundering carpet store. Now, when I say approached, basically every restaurant and store we walked past people invited us to come in and eat/see what they had, but this was a man who saw us walking along and came and chatted with us for about 300 metres, until we came to his store and he tried to get us to go in. We declined, and managed to extricate ourselves from the situation.
I used my navigational trick of the day before and headed towards a prominent spire that I was sure was near the spice market. Unfortunately, I picked the wrong one, and after wandering through Turkish backstreets, past lots of shops in a very non-tourist part of the city, we ended up back at the Grand Bazaar. Now that we knew where we were, I was able to get my bearings and get us on the right path by once more heading through the meandering streets and non-touristy shops, before arriving at the Spice Bazaar about 15 minutes later.

Unlike the Grand Bazaar with its sprawling corridors, the Spice Bazaar was L shaped and, oddly enough, is not just about spices. Sure, about 60% of the stores are spice stores with grand displays of everything you could imagine (we found saffron, which was quite cheap here), but there were also patisseries, delicatessens, jewelry and clothing stores. We didn’t pick up any spices, but found this amazing pastrami, lightly smoked with a strong garlic tang. Mmm-mmmm. We also found ‘Turkish Viagra’, which was a date covered in nuts. We grabbed a box of various nutty-fruity treats, which were all really yummy (particularly the dried apricot, sliced in the middle with a few cashews inside).
We were right near the Bosphorus harbor, and had thought about doing a boat cruise the following day, but since we were here, we decided to do it today. We just missed a boat, so decided to cross the bridge over the Bosphorus. There was a walkway underneath the bridge, which we went across first, and had people out the front of every store asking us to go into their restaurant, and when we declined, they asked us where we were from. We had quickly discovered that this was a means of them drawing out the conversation to keep us at their place of business, and hopefully convince us to go in. We made it to the other side of the bridge, and remembered that we were now on the Asian continent. After walking back across the top of the bridge (and heading back to the European continent), we made our way to the ticket office and got a few tickets for the next Bosphorus cruise. Jumping on the boat, we saw the Aussie family from the hostel; Steve, his wife Joanne, son Riley and daughter Briarne.
Steve and his clan were from Newcastle, Steve was a fireman and Joanne was a nurse, and their kids were two of the most well adjusted kids I’d met. They had traveled every year, and were very well versed in the ways of the world. We chatted with them for most of the cruise, with Steve and I heading off and taking photos of what we were passing from time to time.
Heading along the Bosphorus, we passed a large numbeer of very nice, large, almost palatial residences on the water front. We saw the large Clock Tower, another one of the palaces in Istanbul, among many other sights. The most astounding thing for me was when we passed an old fort rearing up amongst the modern dwellings, almost at the foot of a might bridge that spanned the river. All up, I think I took about 150 photos just of the cruise.
After the cruise had returned, Steve and Jo recommended a nice deli to head to that made fantastic sandwiches, before parting ways. We managed to find the deli, but Lapzang wanted to continue his kebab tasting journey, so we headed to another spot and he was able to tick another kebab off the list.
We headed back to the hostel via the Grand Bazaar, where Doolittle picked up a number of earrings. The owner of the store was a very nice man, who chatted with Lapzang and myself for about 10 minutes about Australia, and how he was a qualified sound engineer, but since the arse-end had dropped out of the music industry in Turkey, he spent most of his time working at the Bazaar, and did sound engineering in his spare time. He even had a business card where one side was for the jewelry store, and the other side was for his sound recording company.

We made it back to the hostel in one piece, and headed up to the terrace with a few beers. We were joined by Riley and Catherine, one of the English girls, and we chatted for a while, before inviting Catherine and her friend Suzanne out for dinner with us. Suzanne was the one who had had the coughing fit the night before, and it turned out that shortly before coming over to Turkey, she had been looking after her brother who had been diagnosed with swine flu (well, in the UK they had stopped doing blood tests like in Australia, so it wasn’t 100% confirmed). We became a bit concerned about getting ill ourselves, particularly since Lapzang and Doolittle’s return to Australia journey will take them through China and other countries who are not tolerant of the swine.
Suzanne spluttered through dinner, and I could tell Lapzang and Doolittle were a bit concerned.
We had headed to the restaurant nearby the hostel that we had gone to on our first night in Istanbul. Mahmut the waiter was still there, and it was a very nice dinner… until the bill arrived. We had been over-charged for a couple of items; for Lapzang’s meal apparently the menu prices had ‘not been updated’, and Doolittle was charged for a ‘meal for 2’, instead of a single person’s dish. This, on top of the swine, caused Doolittle a great deal of angst.
We headed up to the terrace with a few beers while Catherine put Suzanne to bed. Catherine was quite concerned and didn’t know what to do about her friend, as she didn’t want to be stuck in Istanbul while her friend recuperated from his illness, and whether to pull the pin or keep on going with their trip. We were quite concerned, because we didn’t want to get ill, and if the Turkish health authorities got wind of swine in the hostel, they would quarantine the building, halting our trip too.
Catherine called her parents, who told her she should call the British consulate, go the local hospital… everything we didn’t want her to do. Since it wasn’t a 100% ‘confirmed’ case of the swine, we convinced Catherine to hold off for the next day and see how Suzanne fared. At the end of the night, I helped her to organize another 2 nights accommodation at the hostel, which she was quite grateful for.
After this night with a few stresses, it was time for a well-deserved sleep.