Elora goes backpacking

Today was my last night in Istanbul so we kept it simple and went to the Grand Bazar. Here you have to negotiate prices and let me tell yall… I am a BEAST! I have no shame now and I will not be getting scammed what’s so ever.

I helped Leo get 4 Turkish soccer (football) shirts for…. 1200 TRY which is about $35 today. People at the markets were starting 1 shirt at 1200 TRY to 1500 TRY which is a COMPLETE scam as they are fake jerseys. We had to get them at 2 different stalls and when bargaining with people I had fun telling them their shirt is a fake and that they are scammers and they would get soooo butthurt and upset. But my personal favorite was the last stand when the guy told me to calm down. I started yelling at him to not tell a woman to calm down and put my hand up and walked away. He then starts yelling for us to come back and agrees to my bargain so I told him 3 times just to make sure what our deal was and shook his hand and he looked so scared because I just called him out. He then had the audacity to ask where I was from and I told him none of his business and walked away proudly. We actually kept walking around and circled back and the guy was getting ready to call us over to shop and then we made eye contact and he closed his mouth and looked away… I felt even PROUDER! While all of this was happening Leo just stared and would join in here and there but the guy didn’t understand the British accent and I’m just a B**** so he knew I had it from there haha.

Anyways, after we were walking for awhile I spotted a small Texas flag and then I saw the most amazing thing ever… a Buccees stuffed animal in a window. I had to find who went to Texas so I started looking around and the owner of the shop came out and I asked him about it and turns out he has a store in Houston so I had to get a card and he told me he would give me a special deal. The guy sold rugs and there was a massive one hanging so we asked how much since we were curious and he said that he changes the price based on if he likes the people asking and on what they look like. He said if they are older and have a tour guide I’m raising it high they have money, if they are not nice it’s higher, but if they are genuine like me and younger he would give a good price and not scam us. He offered some smaller carpets to us at a super good deal but I already got one in Morocco so I had to pass. He was very honest and hilarious! We said goodbye and thank you to him and then headed off to find food.

We ended up finding pita with Kefta (minced meat) and it was soooooo good! I feel like I inhaled it that’s how good it was! If I had space for a second one I would have eaten another in that sitting. Following that, it was time to go take a mini nap with our food coma so we went back to the hostel and napped. 2 other people in the room were napping too so we all had great ideas for a mid day nap haha.

After the nap we were planning to go to the game night on the roof but had to get some beer from the store since it’s cheaper so we went down to grab that and one of the restaurant owners offered us tea free of charge from him soooo we went and sat down to drink tea because free is free. The owner was sooo nice and gave us apple tea which I have been obsessed with (I bought a box for when I’m back in Texas) and then he gave us orange tea and that was really good! We left after an hour and got our drinks and went up to the roof.

We played lots of card games and jenga and I didn’t lose jenga like I always do so a win is a win. We all stayed on the roof until like 5 am, it was a great last night truly! I had the boys write British slang in my journal and had a good laugh at that, I also showed them how to shotgun a beer (it turned out to be Red Bull I think) the American way!Les mer