sunny day

Jordan woke up to blue skies out the window on Monday morning... but soon realized that it was the bright-blue awning hanging over the wrought-iron window. Nevertheless, the sun poked through and we explored more of the old city, stopping at a pet/gardening bazaar to admire plastic jugs of leeches and peacocks in cages. Locals filled the streets today (and many more women!) and the town was bustling with movement and hollers and cars driving down nearly-too-narrow cobblestone streets. In the open-air bazaars, there are no passive sellers ; instead, they continuously call out to passersby and we can only imagine they are saying "figs! figs! I have figs!"


We walked across the bridge to the northern, more modern part of the city and weaved through the industry/tools district to head toward a big tower on the hill. As we climbed a narrow winding cobbled street we realized that nearly every shop on either side held musical instruments--we had apparently entered the instrument district. Turks sell things in cameraderie, which seems counterintuitive to laws of competition, but it must be working. I suppose if you want shoes, you will go to the shoe district and most stores eventually get a portion of sales.

We reached the tower and kept climbing til we came upon a pedestrian shopping street. It seemed more posh than anything in the old town, and people looked more modern--less headscarves, more stiletto boots and sunglasses. When we arrived in Taxim Square, we stopped to share a sesame-bread round from a street cart (sort of like a bagel, but drier) and noticed armed cops patrolling the entire area, including a sniper bearing a machine gun on an adjacent rooftop. There didn't seem to be any urgency or panic in the people's faces as they walked around, so we decided this must be a normal state of affairs.

We crossed back into the old city over the easternmost bridge, passing by a row of restaurants and bars on the lower level who tried in various languages--Turkish, Spanish, English--to entice us in (apparently as a couple we look like we could speak any of these three). Back at the bazaar, we went spice-shopping and were drawn into a booth by a funny character of a man. He led us on a tour of his spices, clinging to my forearm and turning to talk inches from my face. After he explained various mixtures--meatball spice, lemon salt (for fish) he served us hot apple tea, and we chose what we wanted. We pointed at the three mentioned above, as well as some apple and turkish tea and hot red pepper flakes. This booth's winning asset was the vacuum-pack: our luggage couldn't take much more. He scooped about a kilo of each at first; we had to shake our heads and ask him to dump at least half of each bag, and we still walked away with $40 of spices. They're good-quality, and different than what we would find in our markets.

Back in Sultanhamet, we used the Lonely Planet to pick an Indian restaurant next to the Aya Sophia called Dubb. We were led to a table on the fifth floor, seated near a wall of windows with an eye-to-eye view of the mosque. It was spectacular, framing the monument lit by accent lights and looming over everything in its domain.