 Welcome to Blue Ocean Studios  Around the World
After breakfast, I talked to a different desk person. Apparently, the previous person didn't tell anyone about our problem. Long story short, they weren't going to lower the price, and we walked outside a few feet and got a new hotel (Hotel Umay) for half the price with double the size room (although, it turns out no AC, but not a big deal as the nights are cold). Crazy.
By now, we had spent a couple hours looking at carpets, so it was time to have lunch, and discuss what we wanted to do. We grabbed two slighly overpriced crepes (as you pay a little to be able to eat next to the shopping stalls). I had something similar to what Jaimie had the previous day, banana, honey, and nuts, while Jaimie had a pesto cheese crepe. They both tasted great!
We left the carpet shop and tried out a few other stalls. The labryinth was overwhelming! After circling the same area, we thought we had covered a large portion, but we hadn't even scratched the surface. We passed some jean stalls, and Jaimie actually tried a few on. We're thinking of adding a new counter of how many pieces of duct tape are holding her jeans together (currently 2, but needs at least 4). We didn't find anything that she liked, so we moved on. We passed the book section, and picked up a new book for Jaimie, as we're going to be spending a lot of time on trains and buses the next few days.
We made it back to the station, and sat down for the show. Jaimie picked up a flyer. I wish I could include a link to the crazy religious babbling written in this thing. I guess we had paid $13 to help a religious cult - this organization preaches about a person Melvi whose mother is love, whose sister is love, etc. It was such crazy talk I can't even write more about it. Kinda funny (it was hard to not laugh when I saw these people come out with their hats on). Anyways, about 8 people came out and started with some music for about 45 minutes. I felt like I was in a high school band show. It was painful. I looked around, and of the 40 people there, about 10 were sleeping (or at least had their eyes closed). Funny.
All in all, it was a pretty scary thought about what these people do in their religious gatherings, but we can say we enjoyed watching the twirlers twirl. We got a little disoriented ourselves, perhaps from the twirlers, as we made our way back to the hotel. We were so deep in discussion about our plans for the next few days that we kept missing the turns for our streets. We also stopped so I could get a hair cut for $4 (although the barber first asked for $10). I'll miss the inexpensive 40 minute thorough cuts (although I don't think Jaimie will miss watching them). We made it back to our hotel, after being escorted by at least one of the many curious cats on the street. Will miss all the cats in the streets! Day 161 - Istanbul < | Index | Photo Galleries | > Day 163 - Istanbul and wrapping up Turkey © 2007 Blue Ocean Studios, LTD. All rights Reserved. Privacy Policy | Terms of Use | Services | About | Contact Prints | Return Policy | View Cart World Travel Galleries | World Travel Blog | Links |
We were incorrect on the 6am call to prayer yesterday. It's actually around 4am (and loud!). Oh well. Worse than an early morning call was the smell we woke to. In this 19th century building, converted to hotel in 1980, it smelled like all of the playful cats in the neighborhood came into our room and went to the bathroom. It was horrible (like we were smelling 200 years of sewer rot). The previous night was pretty bad as well - but this morning, it was unbreathable. In all of our travels, we have never had a room smell this bad (that's bad!). I went downstairs at 6am to talk to the desk person. No other rooms available. I wasn't happy, and told him to talk to his boss about our pricing (we were overpaying to begin with - but now it was ridiculous). We opened the window, and with the breeze, it cleared up a bit. By 9 am, when we actually got up, it was much better. 
Anyways, we moved our stuff the few feet over, and we headed to the Grand Bazaar, or Kapali Carsi. The Grand Bazaar is a 15th century covered market, now consisting of 4000 shops and 64 streets. It was like a labryinth as we entered. You can buy just about anything here, from spices, to jeans, to silveware. We intended on doing some carpet shopping in Turkey, and this seemed like the place to go. We entered our first carpet shop (choosing mostly haphazardly, as everyone wants you to come into their shop). We climbed the stairs with the salesperson, who began asking us a few "get to know you" questions, and a few "what are you interested in" questions. As we saw more and more carpets, we began to narrow down which patterns and which colors we liked. After about 10 minutes of his time, he jumped right to the price question. His price was very high for us, so after another 20 minutes of viewing, we were off to another vendor to see their prices. Of course, there's a lot that goes into a carpet's pricing, including the design, the yarn, the dyeing, etc. We tried pretty hard to get a good understanding of each aspect of the pricing and the carpet's quality, as we went from store to store. 
The second carpet vendor was still too high for us, so, after lunch, we decided to try one more vendor. At a third vendor, after finding a few carpets that we actually could see in our house, we found out that the prices here were the highest. We explained our story about how the lowest prices we had bargained so far were about 30% lower than where he was, and that we were interested in even lower than that, including shipping and customs to our house. Yada, yada, yada, we negotiated and chatted, and ended up a further 10% off the lowest price that we had negotiated at the last vendor. In addition, we ended up with 2 carpets (not for the price of one, but close :))! While I'm sure our salesperson was happy, we were too, knowing that these carpets should last a long time, and will be a great reminder of our happy trip to Turkey.
Leaving the Grand Bazaar, we headed to our next destination of the spice bazaar - it was going to be a bazaar day (ha). On the way, we navigated windy cobblestone streets up and down small hills with crowds of locals going on with their daily routines. It was fun to be in such a lively place. We passed locals buying corn on the cob, and I had to join in. The street food here seems safe (and from the couple of times we've had it so far, we've done well). The corn on the cob was no exception - and it tasted great. We moved on to the spice bazaar, where dozens of shops had an assortment of spices and candies. While the spices delighted our eyes, we decided to move in on the candy to delight our mouths as well. The Turkish delight's were ok, but I think Jaimie liked them a bit more than I did. I enjoyed the honey/walnut spirals (best way to describe them), and we were able to sample a decent variety for free, walking away with a couple in a bag for later. We peroused the different shops, and enjoyed the sights. One of the most popular things selling (at least, half of the barrel was clearly recently bagged in just about every shop), was henna (which looked like green or brown spice). It seems the locals use it to die their hair red (strange?). 
After about 20 minutes in the spice bazaar, we were off again. This time to the train station, as Jaimie had "fallen" for a semi-tourist trap of the Twirling Dirvishes. We walked into the station, and purchased tickets for $13 each for the 7:30pm show. We set out to find food before the show. Unfortunately, we weren't in the touristy area, so the food stations here catered more to the locals who wanted a quick bite to eat while they worked. This pretty much meant that every choice had meat in it, which wasn't good for Jaim. We walked around a bit, and ended up settling on soup for Jaimie and a not-so-tasty grilled chicken for me. Oh well, can't expect a great meal every time :). During our food search, we did end up walking through a photography section of town, and they even had the cleaning fluid I use (again, which I left in philly). I was surprised they had it, but even more surprised at it being 3x the price as the US. So were the pads, and so was the stick I use to clean my camera with. In total, it would have been about $50, and I just didn't need it that bad. It was just surprising to see the same products I use in a random store in Turkey :). 
Finally, the last 20 minutes, about 7 people came out in their robes, and for the first 4 minutes, walked around in a circle bowing at each other. Weird. And finally, what we had all come to see, the 7 people started twirling. I wasn't sure what to really expect here. But they just twirled, and twirled, and twirled. It was a twirling extravaganza. They just didn't stop. I figured at least one of them would stop and fall over, possibly vomit, or something. But they held strong. For about 15 minutes, they twirled. I clocked the fastest of the twirlers - she was twirling at the rate of about 70 rpm. Try doing that for about 20 seconds. It was definitely a show of endurance. They did 4 sessions of the twirling, with about a 1 minute break in between each session, where they lined up and bowed to each other. 