Two Bazzars and a boat

Today we walked up the hill to the Grand Bazzar and then down the other side to the Spice Bazzar which is right near the shores of The Bosphorus. The Grand Bazzar was huge and had a lot of jewellery, carpets, handbags, ceramics, scarves and shoes, among other things. "Life is short, spend your money ", "it's almost free", some of the calls! We had lunch in the square by the Roman 'burnt' column, before walking to the Spice Bazzar. Omg, around the Spice Bazzar was the bisiest place I have ever seen, packed, it was slightly less busy inside, more than half of the people would have been locals. There was a lot of Turkish Delight, Baclava, nougat rolls, teas made from dried flowers and herbs, all very colourful and bright. We bought a few samples!
After that we walked down and watched the boats go by from one of the bridges, packed with people (successfully) catching their tea. The Bosphorus strait is very busy with boat traffic going back and forth across between the 2 sides of the city. It is also international waters, so there is also a lot of freight ships going through to the Black sea, and also, we heard, some Russian subs going towards the Ukraine.

Later on we took a sunset boat tour on The Bosphorus, it was great to see both sides, old and newish (only a couple of hundred years old), Europe and Asia, the bridges that connect them, and a huge pod of dolphins.Read more