Turkey - Day 7 (Pt 2) & 8

[continued from previous post]

Okay, last post!! Well, I'm sure I'll find things to add over time, but this is the last on our activities and tours. The previous post ended with the last stop of our morning tour - at Ayasofya - and the excitement of going to the Spice Market.

Our tour guide takes us to the stall she recommends before bidding us farewell and going to enjoy her afternoon off. But first, she explains the name of the shop: Harem Saray. If you’d been paying attention to my previous posts you would know that saray means palace, and harem refers to the domestic section of the palace, where the women live. If you hadn’t been paying attention, I won’t hold it against you. I’m sure I missed out on a lot of translations and explanations over the course of the week, anyway :)


We lunch at Hamdi, a restaurant that was recommended to us before we arrived in Turkey, and again by Latife. It occupies all four floors of one shop (not the whole block of shops), and we are lucky in that we got to sit on the top floor and see the magnificent skyline of Istanbul outside our window, even if it is raining and cloudy outside. We lunch on the ‘usual’ – salad, bread, kebabs and finish up with Turkish coffee and teas. It's good, but the service is what we have come to expect in Turkey. Slightly aloof, waiters that disappear whenever you want to actually order something, and far-too-efficient removal of our plates :)


We then return to the Spice Market and spend hours there, enjoying the afternoon of bargaining and joking with the traders. I listen with amusement as my brother is offered camels for my sister – a compliment to her, supposedly. Camels are expensive, alright?? :) We end up purchasing all sorts of things, from T-shirts to pashminas, cushion covers to tea light holders, and of course, spices, dried fruit, Turkish Delight, and apple tea.

When we are finally ready to leave the Spice Market, it is almost closing time, 7pm. Good timing, except where do we go for dinner now? It is drizzling again. I have not yet had ‘authentic’ kebab-shop type food. We’ve had great food in restaurants, but have yet to sample the food from the smaller ‘kopitiam’-type of shops. So I suggest that and there are no objections. We gear up to head out into the cold – gloves, beanies and scarves on; jackets zipped and coats buttoned up; umbrellas up – and begin the walk back in the direction of the apartment, all the while keeping a lookout for ‘authentic’ kebab shops. We find one that looks popular and provides seats upstairs. We have to wait downstairs for a table to become available, and when we finally make our way upstairs, the reason becomes apparent: it’s tiny! Haha. No matter. We put our shopping safely in a corner and await the food that we pre-ordered downstairs.

We tuck into doner kebabs, kebab rolls, fish, and kumpir that are all priced at a fraction of what we paid in restaurants, but certainly no less delicious. Hmm… maybe I should set up a Turkish restaurant in KL! Then I could have all this food whenever I wanted… Our first order is not quite enough; the fish is delicious so we order a second helping of that. I think that we made a spectacle of ourselves, sending the ‘waiter’ down to help us order more food and drink.

Finally satisfied, we set off back to the apartments, stopping along the way so that I can buy some baklava. We hadn’t had it all week, and I couldn’t leave without having some!

We get back at around 8.30pm, arms laden with shopping, bellies full of food, and empty pockets. Lol. Metin is surprised that we have had dinner, but I think subconsciously we all knew that we had to get started early on the packing because we had bought so much :) I think we, all of us, just managed to stuff everything into our respective bags (between the 5 of us, there were 4 final destinations).

That night, we could not get the hot water running in the shower (the wash basin and kitchen sink were fine). We couldn’t in the morning earlier that day either, but I think everyone just assumed that someone else had informed Metin. No one had. Uh oh. I trudge down the stairs to ask if there was a problem with the hot water system. No, I’m told, it should work. The guys check the hot water in the shower in the apartments above and below ours – they work. So what’s up with ours? It turned out that someone had installed the pipes wrongly in our shower, so to get hot water, we had to turn the knob to the right, instead of the left. And didn’t I feel pretty dumb for not having tried that…:p

We pack up, sleep, and the next morning, prepare for our flight without much incident. As expected, there were some dramas during the course of the trip (that I shall not get into), but really, what’s a family holiday without it? This morning, there is no time for drama. In a few hours, we will be parting ways with my sister at the airport. Before that, we have our last meal in Istanbul at Angel’s, snap a few photos with Metin and of mum and dad on his bike, load the car, and are off on our trip to the airport. One last opportunity to see the streets and sights of Istanbul.

I am sad, very sad to leave. I feel like I have only touched the tip of the iceberg, and indeed, as I discover when I get back to Malaysia, there is so much of Turkey that we did not see, and probably could not cover even if we stayed there a year. I had accumulated 1GB worth of photos, a memory full of well, memories, a heart full of feelings, and hopefully a lifetime friendship. I know that made no sense, but I’m trying my hardest to explain (obviously not so eloquently) how this trip has been such an eye-opener in so many ways. Gotta remember to thank the folks for it again one day! ;)