So we went to bed at 3:30 in the morning last night because of that damn nap we took yesterday afternoon. So 7 o'clock this morning sucked, but we got up anyways and packed up our stuff. We ate breakfast on the rooftop terrace again and Heather and Judy (the older English woman) chatted it up the whole time again.

So we've learned a lot of things during our stay in Turkey thus far, so I'm going to start sharing them each day:
-You get ketchup and mayonaise with every meat dish
-There is no mustard in this country
-"Yes Please" applies to more situations than you could ever imagine
-"Lady Lady"
-There is nothing like your first morning whiff of Turkish stench...really clears the sinuses
-"No photo"
-You can buy jeans in the bazaar for 5 TL (like $3.50 USD)
-"Problem, problem" - use this when when you don't understand what the hell they are saying
-"It shouldn't hurt to get into the bed" - Heather
(They don't have fitted sheets here so they use the regular sheet to cover the matress but then they don't put a second sheet on the bed for you to sleep under. They have duves as blankets...its all kinds of wrong)
-There are no pillow top mattresses here, beds are like sleeping on a slab of granite
-Turkish people love pregnant women. Its an automatic 10% discount as soon as they figure out Heather is pregnant

So it took me about 10 minutes to pack my bag, the cameras, and both backpacks...Heather took 20 minutes before breakfast and 20 minutes after to pack her 1 bag...how did all her stuff get out of the bag in 2 days? So our original plan was to get an early start and be standing in line at Topkapi Palace by 8:30 for the 9 o'clock opening...but we were moving kind of slow on account of the 3:30 bedtime and the extended conversations at breakfast, so we didn't get there till about 9:30. Watch out for the organized tour groups...I thought they were bad at Aya Sophia, there are like 3x as many here. Anyhow, the palace was nice, its not hard to imagine how there used to be 10,000+ people living inside the walls, there were at least that many there today touring! But its a very big place with tons of photo ops, so it wasn't hard to skip around the crowds and get lots of photos. There are about 15-20 exhibit halls but they only have about 5 open on any one day, why? I don't know. But honestly, its really just a collection of buildings at this point, there is very little authentic furniture still in place and very few paintings on display...its hard to really get a feel for what it used to be like. The jewelry display was cool, but the line was horendous.

We rolled out of there and down the hill to walk through the park that runs parallel to the palace (some of the palace walls make up the border of the park). It is a very tranquil setting and is extremely well landscaped and maintained. The park shoots you out onto the Bosphorous with a big Turkish flag and a statue of Ataturk overlooking the bay. From there its about a 2 mile walk up the road to the Egyptian Bazaar (Spice Bazaar), but we only made it about a 1/2 mile before we said screw it and flagged down a taxi. $5 TL for the rest of the way was well worth it. The Spice Bazaar is a collection of shops selling every kind of spice you can name as well as cheeses, nuts, clams, fruit, Turkish delights, and a whole lot of other things. We decided to buy some fresh authentic Turkish tea to take home, so we ducked into the busiest looking stall and immediately this little nasty street urchin of a man approaches us and wants to hug us asking us where we come from. We're from Texas, not the USA mind you...people the world over know Texas. Anyhow, we place our order for the tea and this nasty little man asks us, "how much you want? 1/2 kilo? kilo? 2 kilos?" and you know immediatly what both of us thought...so anyhow I torture Heather a little bit more and insist they take a picture together.

Behind the Spice Bazaar is a no-name bazaar that stretches up the hill for about a mile and is lined with everything and anything you can imagine from fake viagra, piles of socks, childrens cloths, jewelry, pots and pans, and about 50 different spots selling leather belts with fake designer buckles. This is where the locals shop, and since it was Sunday, they were all shopping. We knew we were off the beaten path when we had walked about 100 feet and hadn't seen anyone else with a camera...we on the other hand were snapping photos of every stall. We walked to the top of the hill and then turned around and let gravity take us back to the bottom to the Spice Bazaar. Here we stopped in a rock shop that was lined with necklaces, rings, earings, braclets and raw stones of every name you can come up with. They had a whole wall of what I believe were real pearls at ridiculously cheap prices...like cheaper than Thailand! I thought we should get some ($12 TL for a necklace of medium size pearls), but we settled on an "emerald" necklace for $40. If its real, and I'm not saying it is, it was a great buy. I'm taking it to the jewelry store when we get back to find out if it is indeed real.

From there we went up 1 street and walked back up the same hill, the same mile (feet are definetly burning by now) to meet up with the backside of the Grand Bazaar which is closed on Sundays and wound our way around to the Book Bazaar which is about 40 shops selling every kind of book in every language you can think of. We saw 300 year old antique books in one shop and the next shop was selling things like Microsoft Office 1997 for Dummies...because you never know when you might need to dust off the old pentium 1 and fire up some Excel 97!

Next we pulled into the Old Bazaar which is just about 15 shops selling scarfs, carpets, hookas, and wood inlaid items. The prices aren't any different from the Grand Bazaar (expensive) but we were 2 of 4 people in the area at the time so its a completly different shopping experience. We walked out with a scarf.

We hadn't eaten yet so we pulled into the busiest kebab shop in Sultanmehmet, Semazen Bufe & Restaurant, for a couple of kebabs. Although its extremely busy and they turn and burn the tables as fast as possible, if you're sitting and enjoying yourself they don't hassle you to get up and leave, its a very enjoyable spot to sit and do some people watching. So Heather and I are sitting there on the streets of Istanbul eating a kebab and I'm having a beer (water for her) listening to the call to prayer bounce from mosque to mosque, and we were thinking, "wonder what everyone else is doing back home?" See, so we were thinking of you!

After an enjoyable hour and a half or so, we left from there and made our way across the hippodrome towards our hotel. Apparently Sundays are Muslim picnic day, there were about 20 in the grass areas around the Blue Mosque and about 900 along the Bosphorous Road to the airport. We stopped in the Astrar Bazaar at the lamp dealer we talked to yesterday to pick up the lamps we had set our minds on. It was election day in Turkey today and the shop owner was anxious to discuss it with me, so we had a 20 minute conversation on the politics of Turkey and the interactions of Muslims with the rest of the world...very enlightening.

So as we got back to the hotel to pick up our bags and catch our airport transfer, I realized I told the hotel the wrong flight time (50 minutes later than it actually was) so I was in a bit of a panic for the driver to show up. He came on time (6:30) but that only left us an hour before take off, and its a 25-30 minute drive to the airport from the hotel. Good thing Mario Andretti showed up to drive us to the airport!!! No seriously, this guy was the craziest driver I have ever met, and I was glad for it. We get in the van and the hotel front desk clerk tells the driver of our situation and the driver says, "no problem". We pull out of the neighborhood and get on the main road where he asks me, "you like fast cars? You like drive fast?" I say, sure who doesn't? He says, "it ok I drive fast, I like adrenaline..." so I say, "sure go ahead", we need to be there in 55 minutes anyhow. Bear in mind that this guy is driving a 15 passenger tall-boy van. He's doing 130km in a 70, passing on the left and right, honking the horn, flashing the lights, rolling red lights....he even passed between 2 cars on a 2 lane road. He's hooping and hollaring the whole time and throwing me thumbs-up in the rear view mirror. I have to commend Heather for not saying anything and just looking out the window the whole time. Total trip time? No not 25-30 minutes...11!!!!!

We get to the airport with more than enough time to spare, roll through security without having to take the laptop out of the bag or throw away my water bottle, "no problem, no problem". We board a 737 from 1937...no seriously, I have never been on an older plane, if this thing was built after 1970 I'd be very surprised. It gets us there in one piece, the only complaint being that the stewardess and pilot must have been bored because they talked in 3 languages almost the entire 1 hour and 20 min flight.

Our airport transfer wasn't there on arrival, waited for 10 minutes then went to talk to the Avis guy about renting a car...$65 USD/day for a Fiat Albeo (size of a mini cooper)...yea right dude, I'll take a taxi. Walked back down the stairs and there's the guy holding a sign with my name on it less than 10 feet from where I left Heather to watch for him..."Hey babe, our guy is here, did you see him?" "Oh, no, I was too busy keeping mosquitos off me".....gonna have to get some bug spray tomorrow.

After the transfer to our hotel about 30 km away, I'm regreting not getting the rental car tonight instead of tomorrow, the roads would have been no problem to navigate at night...damn Lonely Planet guide book saying the roads were treacherous, the author obviously has never driven in Houston! So seriously, if you have a brain behind the wheel, don't worry about driving from Dalaman to Fethiye at night, its an easy drive and is well marked.

Ate dinner at the hotel bar, Heather is excited about the pool and she can smell the salty air, improved sense of smell being pregnant I guess because I didn't smell anything.