Shopping in Istanbul

Istanbul has the Grand Bazaar and the Egyptian Spice Bazaar, and a carpet seller on every corner. These places are really interesting for their history, and exciting for shopping. The Grand Bazaar is one of the largest buildings, with little shops crammed in spaces, little walkways between. They sell the sames things, carpets, kilum, scarves, leather, shoes, dishes, turkish delight. The spice market sells SPICE! and cheese, tea, olive oil, plants, belly dance costumes.
I love the fruit tea that I brought home, I haven't dared get out any spices yet, Ron hasn't gotten over the smells yet.
I bought a sunflower collage, it is made of old tent material, with the original dyes, and sewed together.
I planned on buying a carpet, everyone is supposed to buy a carpet in Turkey, but they sell used carpets, not really antiques, but old, I just couldn't get into bringing home an old carpet for my floor. The new carpets, sold by goverment sponsored stores, gauranteed to be hand made, natural dyes, were $4000, I couldn't get into that either.
Oh yeah, there are cats all over the city! Everywhere!

Working in Istanbul

The Chamber of Commerce arranged these meetings with manufacturers from across Turkey. We met in the Chamber's offices. They made small offices for us to meet with the representatives. We were the only company from the US, and the only people there who did not speak at least two languages. English was the common demoninator for most of these people. We had dinner with all the representatives, they all spoke English when speaking with someone outside their group, then would speak their native language with their coworkers. It was very interesting to meet so many people from other countries.

Ron's Happy Meal

Ron was so disgusted by the food in Istanbul, something about the spices made him sick, when we found this McDonalds, he was very happy.

Last Night

This was our last night in Istanbul. We had the roof top cafe to ourselves. We watched the sun set over the Sea Of Marmara.

St Sophia

This is a mosaic of Christ in St Sophia, this was a church that was converted to a mosque by one of the rulers. Sadly, there is so much history here, but it was lost on me.