Two more awesome adventures to report on this page. First, a trip to the Istanbul Spice Market, or Spice Bazaar as the Turks call it. It is the second largest bazaar in the city - second only to the Grand Bazaar, which we also visited and I found almost impossible to get photos that truly represent it's labyrinthine passageways! Also details on our Bosporus Cruise - quite the adventure!
The Spice Bazaar is immense!! We wandered through aisles and aisles of stalls filled with an amazing array of spices, dried foods, essential oils, perfumes and the omnipresent Turkish Delights. Brightly lit, the bazaar is overflowing with colors, scents, people selling, people buying and people gawking. Each stall claims to have the BEST spices and the highest quality Saffron. If we hadn't had Taylan to help us wend our way through to a reputable stall, who knows what we would have ended up with as none of us spoke Turkish and the English translations are sometimes a bit lacking.
The stall we visited, called Hayfene, No:51, is a stall which looked to us like every other stall. Bright, cheery and immaculate. They boasted hundreds of spices and much more as you can see in the photos below. We had a short lecture about the spices, the Saffron in particular, and a brief overview of their stock and their practices when handling the spices, etc. We got to taste a number of different spices and spice mixes, smell oils and perfumes, try dried fruits with the talk ending in a tasting of different Turkish delights. It was delicious! Almost everyone bought something, it was all too irresistible! We bought some spice mixes and dried fruit. I love getting those spice mixes out and cooking with them now that I'm home.
Afterwards, we ambled down the street towards the docks and boarded our own private cruise boat for a two hour ride. Thank goodness we had a good captain as there appears to be no rule of thumb for who has the right of way! We watched in awe as the captain navigated his way through the crowds of boats. Then we all relaxed and enjoyed the scenery along the way. We cruised out to the bridge between Europe and Asia, up one shore and back the other. Taylan kept us entertained and engaged discussing the history, both modern and ancient as we drank in all the sights on the shores.
Not only did we learn history, but Taylan also talked with us about the social and cultural events and trends of the past and present. We had a lively group of fellow travelers, full of questions and comments. This created an always interesting conversation which continued to evolve and deepen over the course of our time together.
Check out this link for more info: https://www.ricksteves.com/tours/greece-turkey/turkey