Istanbul - The Grand Circuit

Last count, the number of steps taken today were 10800. Factor into that some pretty steep hills and lots of cobblestone and you get some idea of our day. After a bountiful hotel breakfast, we set off for the shopping experience of a lifetime - Istanbul's Grand Bazaar. We discovered early this morning that we had no guide for today which was just as well - who wants to guide people in a shopping area?

This marketplace is a warren of twisting lanes and shops, all indoors. We hit it just as they were opening, which as it turns out is a good plan because we didn't get anywhere near the amount of aggressive hawking we had tolerated five years ago. The walk was really enjoyable.

After you get off the main street where all the high end jewellery shops are located, the variety of merchandise at affordable prices increases. There is no flat or straight street through this market. Therefore, many photo ops abound.

Turkish love their morning coffee and tea. This was a very quaint cafe set up within the bazaar.

As it turns out, Westerners didn't do a good job of translating this country's name. It's not really Turkey, but rather Turkiye and even if we chose to drop the final e, it still wouldn't be the bird. From the Bazaar we headed downhill towards the Golden Horn. On our route we experienced more human mules moving great bundles of merchandise than we've seen since China.

At the bottom of the hill was the Spice Market. It's always hard for us to get out of here without some gastronomic goodies.

Our route now took us across the Golden Horn on the Galata Bridge. Looking back at the heart of old Istanbul is an awesome site.

Lined along the bridge were many fishermen, who were selling their fresh catch of small delectable fish. Other views just kept on coming.

Then we started the tough part of the walk up the hill to the Galata Tower built in 1348 to keep an eye on Istanbul.

We were now on a quest to find Istanbul's Hard Rock Cafe. This was not easy, since they haven't been open a year and noone we asked knew what we were talking about. Despite this, we did find it and had a great lunch, a birthday lunch, since Dawn was celebrating another year of fun and frolic today. Not a shabby place to celebrate a birthday!

After lunch, we walked down a vibrant major shopping street called Istiklal Caddesi on our way to Taksim Square. This is the location of recent student protests, of which our Hard Rock waiter was a participant and had a few stories to tell. The little patch of trees in this photo was the point of contention - shopping mall or park. Park has won, for the time being.

Now we were at the furthest point from our hotel that we had been today. So we traced a relatively straight path back. There might have been a few sights along the way. The inside of mosques may be similar, but the exteriors certainly differ.

Tonight for Dawn's Birthday, we went online and determined the best restaurant closest to our hotel. Probably, if we asked how many restaurants are within 200 metres from the hotel, the search would come back with over 100. The search we did liked the restaurant immediately adjacent to the hotel called Medusa. The name is not encouraging, but the dinner was excellent. In general, we are finding dining in Turkey very cheap/affordable.

Tonight's meal was once again - unlike lunch - very ethnic. The ladies had the Medusa kebob, speciality of the house. The white stuff is yogurt.

Tony had meatballs which were flattened and I had a veal steak. For dessert I had a candied pumpkin and early unripened walnut - very unique and very wonderful. Our meals were fabulous. After the lengthy circuit today, everyone was pooched following dinner, so we called it a night. As we peered out our bedroom window, this was the view.