Day 12 – A Spicy farewell
October 22 -- Istanbul to Home
This morning’s call to prayer was a lot more pleasant. The guy had a beautiful voice, and I can actually appreciate it because he didn’t eat the mic and add a bunch of distortion. We dozed back off until our alarms went off and then went upstairs for our last Turkish breakfast. I’m absolutely going to miss bread here, and the general vibes. Warm weather, cool breeze and beautiful view of the Yeni Cami (new Mosque) I didn’t know about it, so a quick Google search revealed that this mosque was actually commissioned by a woman in the 1600s. After some political turmoil, construction was halted, decades past and then it was finished by a woman in the 1700’s. Seemed just fascinating to me seeing how a woman had that much power in a truly male-dominated society.
After breakfast, it was off to the Grand Bazaar. We already had it set in our minds that we wouldn’t get anything there, as it’s super expensive compared to the shops right outside our hotel, but we still wanted it go and experience it.
Man. Was this place huge. The Grand Bazaar is one of the WORLD’s oldest continuous markets, constructed in 1455. We walked all up and down corridors, looking at all the shops, the spices, the American knockoffs, everything.
Once we took everything in and got our pictures, we headed back out. I did stop at a few stores along the way, one to get fresh Turkish delights and the other, fresh baklava for my coworkers to try. I could have gotten them from stands anywhere we went, but I wanted to get it from a store with a bakery actually attached to it. No problem. After that, we continued on to the spice market.
This is where I would do a majority on my shopping for the trip. I like to cook and I was excited to get the spices for it. As soon as we entered, a shopkeeper hollered as we passed, “hey, we’re going the wrong way! You need to come in here!”
And I thought, you know, I could spend all day in the spice market looking for different vendors who all sell all the same thing, or I can just go and oblige. We decided on the latter…we did have a plane to catch.
It was exactly the experience I wanted.. smelling spices, tasting teas, talking about what blend was good with what. It was exactly what the experience I had hoped for. So I got all of my spices, several teas, and a lot of gifts. I also found the smelling salts that I found in Greece. I was developing a little bit of a cold, on the cruise ship… I think from the dampness of the ship, And so I had been pretty stuffed up for the past several days. They sold the stuff that I wanted at the store in Ephesus, but I totally forgot to buy it. But this guy had it, and hospitality dictated he let me try it, even though I was aboslutely going to buy it. Cleared up instantly. After I got all the things, it as time to head back to the hotel to get our stuff.
We went back to the shops outside our hotel to find Elijah some Crocs. He had broken his Crocs probably day 1. One of the stores outside of our hotel were selling them for about 600 Lira… 12 bucks. Couldn’t pass that deal. So we got Crocs, and Elijah found some Nike tech, but we were running out of time.
We hurried down the street feeling really amped up in our ability to be able to speed walk everywhere… and made it to our bus stop. The worker there said oh about 5 minutes. Which turn into 10. He told the next lady 45 minutes later than the time he told us. And the bus not yet arrived. I knew the buses were usually late, like 8 or 10 minutes, but 15 was cutting it too close. Had no idea what the security line would look like and since we literally just spent 2.5 hours in the last one, we didn’t want to take the chance. So, we had a bite the bullet and get texting. The guy saw Nate flag down a taxi and said no no and tried to convince to stay saying it’s only 2 minutes away, but he then showed us on the map. Little did he know that I studied those maps… The bus hadn’t left the previous stop…they waited last time for it to fill. And with midday traffic, there was no way that was going to take 2 minutes for him to get to us. So I felt even more confident about our decisions to take a cab.
The cab ride was unremarkable, except we went on the massive bridge we saw coming over here (I didn’t take the picture, but here’s one I stole from the Internet) and yeah I like bridges so that was cool. We arrived and as our cab made it’s way through the chaos, for funsies I checked to see where the bus was.
32 minutes behind us. Yeah, glad we didn’t wait. Security was reasonable, about 45minutes total ( security 1, passport control, security 2) and we had enough time to get a quick lunch at the lounge. I got some chicken sausage meatloaf (yes, it is exactly how I described) and bread. Lots of bread. I meant to go to a bakery in the spice market and didn’t find one, so I would stock up here. Gonna miss being able to eat it. Also some Turkish milk sweets and tea.
The trip has come to an end.
I write this as we wait for boarding to finish. It’s been wonderful, difficult, fun and amazing and I absolutely had a great time. I enjoyed seeing the ancient, historic sites, as well as the modern life above them. I enjoyed seeing the bible from a historical lens and the different ways people worship. I enjoyed the secular and sacred spaces and how worldviews are shaped by society and the past. It was an amazing trip that we were blessed to go on and if you’re still reading, I hope you were blessed as well.
~Dannie
Going places. Making things. Tasting stuff.
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