P.S. The Grand Bazaar

How could we forget to mention the Bazaar! I'm sure everyone knows what it is, or has seen pictures of it, but it is quite fun in person.

Brannan boldly browsing the bazaar

 The bazaar has been in the same location since the year 1455! It's the biggest and oldest bazaar in the world and it had some original tile work on the ceilings.

They have over 3,000 shops selling gold, jewelry, carpets, clothes, hookas, and all kinds of trinkets that you can imagine. You could get lost in there for hours

We really expected the shop owners to be more harassing, but they would only say "Hello, come in and look" and you just had to say no thanks and they would leave you alone. A nice surprise after our guidebook warned us of the gauntlet we would have to run and wished us luck.

As a side story, a few days after we had been to the Grand Bazaar, we had an American Day. We ate at Burger King for lunch and went to the movies and had popcorn and soda. We saw the new James Bond Skyfall movie, and to our surprise, the entire opening sequence took place in Istanbul and Bond ran after the bad guy through the Grand Bazaar!

About an hour into the movie, the lights came on and they stopped the movie for a 10-minute intermission

Intermission at the movies... huh?

 But after some contemplation, we realized it must have been prayer time and they stopped the movie so people could go out and pray. If that wasn't the reason, then it was just plain weird.

We also saw the Spice Bazaar, which was a step on the wilder side somehow.  This bazaar had spices (surprise!) of every kind imaginable, and it smelled fantastic! It was a major assault on the senses to walk through there.  They also had dried fruits, baklava and Turkish Delight.

There are exotic dried fruits and nuts hanging from the ceilings

I had only had one piece of Turkish Delight and there were hundreds of flavors to choose from. We went into a shop and said we didn't know what we wanted. The man working there took it as an all-clear to have us try every single flavor in the store. We tried about 10 before we were ready to hurl. So we ended up buying a little bit of our favorites to take home.  Unfortunately, after our heavy sampling in the store, we were no longer interested in Turkish Delight and we donated it to our hotel staff in Bangkok.  I don't think we'll be ready for more until the next time we go to Istanbul.