DAY 4 - "Oohh - those "Fresh" Turkish Men!

March 23 - The Grand Bazaar

Saturday morning began with sleeping in, then we prepared a breakfast with “Bear” pancakes – banana eyes, grape nose, apple smiley face. We also made a Denver omelet, but it turned out to be glorified scrambled eggs. Then we had a fruit salad with THE BEST Turkish yogurt! By the way, the Turkish people invented Greek yogurt, but somehow the Greeks took credit for it, and the Turks are NOT happy about it.

Our Last Breakfast - we cooked and cleaned up

We want to thank Ela, Kemal, and Mine for a wonderful 1st couch surfing experience!

We went to Old Istanbul again to visit the Old Baazar today. First we took a quick tour through the Yeni Cammii (New Mosque). The construction began in 1597 and wasn't completed until nearly a century later – 1663. The women have to cover their heads to go in and everyone takes off their shoes. The moment I went in, I felt a sense of “awe,” and literally the sight took my breath away. I was moved to tears and really could hardly contain myself. I felt such a reverence for the Muslim religion and for all of the people who had come before me. 

When Muslims pray at the mosque, they stand very close together in long lines. Muslims all make the same movements together, at the same time and they always face East, towards Makkah. Makkah is a holy place for Muslims where they make a pilgrimage to at least once in their lives. We took a video which I will add tomorrow, but we have the beautiful ezan recorded for you to hear.  The ezan (call to prayer) summons the faithful to the mosque for prayers.  The first morning in Istanbul, we were awakened at 5 a.m. with the drone sound of a male voice, then we heard another and another, and soon the whole city was singing.  It is quite interesting as there are mosques about every 1/4 of a mile dotted everywhere throughout the city.  There are over 3,000, so you can imagine what it sounds like 5 times a day.

Two beautiful women pose for a picture

A sweet couple so in love

Men in front of a small mosque at prayer time - 6 x daily

 The Grand Bazaar is right next to the New Mosque (some call it the Spice Market) and is one of the largest and oldest covered markets in the world, with 61 covered streets and over 3,000 shops which attract between 250,000 and 400,000 visitors daily. It employs 26,000 people. We unfortunately went at noon on a Saturday, the busiest day of the week. 

"Beans, Beans, Nothing but Beans!"

"Which leech is the fattest and cutest?"

There were aisles of different foods, seeds, plants, flowers, birds - we couldn't even take it all in.  What was crazy, though, was that on nearly every aisle, there were  BIG containers of leeches to purchase.  Evidently the Muslims believe that if you have a sore or open wound, one must put a leech on it to suck out the poison and you would heal much quicker.  I guess it's true - who wants to try it to see if it works?

So we had our backpacks on as we hadn't yet settled down at our next Couch Surfer's home.  I noticed a man standing quite close, listening to us talk about going down one of the aisles to check it out.  As we walked further into the Bazaar, it got more and more crowded.  In fact, we were packed in there with a two lines of people going both ways.  I noticed this same man standing right behind Rich and thought it odd that he seemed to be following us.  Then we couldn't hardly move either direction and all of a sudden I felt a hand on my rear.  I turned and he was right beside me with a grin on his face.  I sternly said, "No, No."  - Rich said to turn quickly and just start making a move, so I did and with our packs on, we rammed our way through the crowd.  Oh my, that was crazy!  That man was crazy and I felt like I had gone crazy!!  We decided we didn't need to see any more of the market.

We couldn't meet our next Couch Surfer until 7 p.m., so we killed some time, then went up a very steep hill to where we thought we were to meet him.  45 minutes later, we realized we had gone up the wrong hill, so we ended up taking a bus to the right place and met Mert, a 39 year old single man living with his sister.  He took us to dinner to a cute little place where we had meatballs, fries, and bread.

Next time we'll get an amazing Turkish Salad Bar

  We became acquainted with him and found out that he spoke VERY good English.  We had many questions for him and he really helped us to understand some things we didn't know.  He lives close to the "hub-bub" of the city.  Another day gone and only 200 left to go!!