This is a trap. I have been invited by my wife to do a guest post about my recent trip to Istanbul. This work trip -- not my idea, and I didn't really have a choice about going -- was over part of Mother's Day Weekend. So the invitation to do a guest post here about that trip is also an invitation for me to incriminate myself. Surely she doesn't think that she married such a fool who would gleefully recount all of the fun he had in Istanbul while she was stuck at home watching two babies and two dogs all by herself. So, for the record, the trip was not fun, I spent most of it suffering in a conference room, working late from a hotel room, and missing my family. What follows here are a few pictures from my extremely limited free time on this trip, along with some general impressions of Turkey.
As soon as I had some free time, I made a beeline for the bazaar, where I hoped to find something for my wife. She really wanted a new purse. On the way, I took a picture of the Blue Mosque and some colleagues taking each other's pictures:
The bazaar is huge, and is several city blocks with several entrances. Below is where I entered.
The process involved not only haggling, but finding the right purse (it was easy to snap a picture with my blackberry and email it to my wife for approval, but unfortunately I found that that tactic -- while important to ensure that I would get a purse she would like -- drove up the price, as the merchant knew that my wife liked it. Also, it really slowed down the process and explains how I spent 4 hours shopping for this purse). Eventually I ended up blindly buying a nice leather purse without knowing whether my wife would like it, because the shops were about to close. But a major negotiating point was explaining that it was for my wife, and I had no idea whether she would like it. That let me pay a lot less than I would have paid. Here it is:
Unfortunately, she likes it. That's unfortunate because it's from a German designer that she didn't know before. Now she now wants more purses from this designer, and they are not cheap. Dang.
On the way back to the hotel, I saw a barbershop. I recently read a John Kass column in the Chicago Tribune about getting a shave and haircut in Istanbul, and wanted to try it. Pretty cool experience, and cheap, too. Too bad barbers back home don't give real shaves anymore.
One of the things the barber was talking about was the big soccer playoff match that night between Fenerbahce and Galatasaray, and the TV in the corner was showing pictures of violent fans clashing with the police, even before the match started. Apparently, things got even crazier later that night. Here is a picture of a bunch of guys (peacefully) watching the match from the sidewalk, as the game was only available on pay TV. This was some kind of travel bureau that had the game running, but the office was closed, so these guys had to lean against the glass to watch the relatively small TV in the back of the room 15 to 20 feet away.
Walking back to the hotel, I saw a guy trying to sell corn on the cob without much luck. I guess he wasn't interested in the game. But if he were interested in selling corn, maybe he should have set up his stand on the sidewalk outside the travel office.
My final sight of the evening before getting some sleep was the Blue Mosque which I had seen on the way to the bazaar. At night, they light it up and it looks pretty neat.
Those white spots are not stars but seagulls. For some reason they really seem to like the mosque.
That was pretty much it. This trip really was mostly about work, but I'm glad I got a chance to scout out the city for a future trip with the whole family.
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