Istanbul - Spice Bazaar (part 1)

The Spice Bazaar is beautiful - colorful and full of amazing smells! They've still managed to stick some souvenir stores in there, but not too many.

Istanbul - the Grand Bazaar

The Grand Bazaar is I think 4 square kms in the center of the historic district of Istanbul. You can find anything from rugs, lamps, clothes, souvenirs, food, jewellery . . .

It is completely covered too - so even on a rainy day you can come and look for things you never thought you might need!
 

Istanbul - the rugs

You can't go to Turkey without going shopping for a turkish carpet or Kilim (the woven instead of knotted rugs. Carpet and Kilim stores line the bazaars and the streets of the historic district. They have all sorts of ways to get you into their shop. This one had Obi - the Cat.

When you begin looking at a rug in the store, there is a process and protocol to it. If you are relatively serious then you accept the tea that is usually offered after the first 10 rugs have been unfolded and shown to you. We went to 3 rug places and in the end my folks find what they liked at the bazaar (last picture).
 

Istanbul - The historical monuments

Istanbul I found was an incredibly varied and beautiful city of around 17 million! The historic district is on the peninsula that sits between the Bosphorous and the Golden Horn. Perfectly placed for a city that was the capitol of the Holy Roman Empire and later the Ottoman Empire for 500 years!
This being my first time in a Muslim country I was fascinated by the mosques and minarets (I'm so used to Cathedrals and bell towers!) What I found interesting was seeing thie Haya Sophia (Holy Wisdom) - originally built by Justinian to be the largest Catholic(!) church in the world - turned into a Mosque. Not unlike what happened in Cordoba to the mosque there, which afterwards was converted/made into a Cathedral. Here is the Haya Sophia now, as a Mosque with four minarets


The "Blue" Mosque - also known as SultanAhment Mosque - is across from the Haya Sophia. This is the view of the internal courtyard


The blue mosque is beautiful inside - the carpets and lights are nice - but I really liked the opennes of Mosques. No Choirs, chapels or pews to fill up the space, just carpets, lights and beautiful designs on the walls. The designs are all blue and red, hence the name - you can't really tell that from this picture unfortunately
Of course every great empire has a castle for its rulers. The Emperors of the Ottoman Empire lived in Topkapi Palace - entrance below .

Topkapi Palace - the Ottoman Empire's palace

The Palace has many entraces, but this is one of the smaller entrances I believe to the inner courtyards. This is what they talk about when they say "to live like kings"


The outdoor courtyard and fountain is where one of the Emperors would have breakfast.

Where in the world am !!??

I thought I was used to traveling . . . . but I think this summer I'm beating my own records. I've also been terrible about "updating" my blog, so I'm going to summarize what I've done in these last two months below with words and pictures.

May - I got to Italy and immediately headed off to Spain by van and ferry. It was actually pretty cool because I got to just hang out and skip about 1000 kms of France while I hung out on a souped up ferry boat. I was hoping to get some rest of course but the screaming high school students on their field trip who happened to be sleeping in the same hallway as me didn't feel others on the boat should sleep!

I was headed off to Andalucia to meet my first group. This tour is so beautiful and we get to see so many cool things - including Olive trees - lots and lots of them . . . .
After finishing my tour in Andalucia I flew back to Italy for a little over a week where I did our classic Venice to Florence and had a wonderful dinner with my family (we all managed to be within 20 miles of each other so we took advantage of this rare occasion to have dinner).

Next, I flew back to Spain to begin my tours on the Camino de Santiago. Still, one of my favorite places to bike and visit. I did two of these trips, back to back - one with some great neighbors from the Fort! and the other with customers who have been with me and us for over 10 trips.

This brings me to the end of June. I then drove back to Italy and spent a week there (without moving!) before driving back to France to begin some scouting for our Pamplona Running of the Bulls and Tour de France tour. Which began in July.

Mid July I finished that tour and trained back to Italy. Of course as usual after running around 3 countries it was bound to happen . . . I lost my cell phone - or I should say I left my cell phone - at the Customer Service office of the Central Milan train station. Fortunately I had made friends with the little old men working there as I was trying to work on my computer and recharge the battery before my train ride home, so they kindly put my phone on the train that was coming one hour later and I just had to wait for it in Bologna! I've never seen such efficiency in the train system!! Amazing what human connections can do :-)

I quickly changed the clothes in my suitcase for clean clothes and jumped on a plane with my mother to Romania! This is when the real adventure began.

I was meeting the ExpedtionPlus! that was coming from St. Petersburg and arriving in Bucharest a couple of days later. Bucharest is not a beautiful European capital city. It has a lot of history though, which is partly what makes it a peacemeal city that shows traces of older better times and the destruction a communist dictator can bring when he is obsessed with himself and his ideas! (see the pictures of the Palace). Here I was able to meet up with Yaya! which was so fun because it is always nice to see a familiar face in unfamiliar surroundings :-)

The cyclists arrived in Bucharest slightly bewildered by the traffic, but safe and sound. They had just cycled across 7 different countries, starting in June in St. Petersburg. To get a good idea of what they went through check out my dad's blog (linked above).

My cycling adventure with them began as we left Bucharest the next day and headed to the Bulgarian border and the Danube. This was going to be my second border crossing by bike this year (the first was in February when I crossed over the Andes from Argentina to Chile!).

I'm going to try and upload some pictures now and I'll continue the story of Bulgaria and Turkey in the next post!

Bulgaria by bike!

Sunflowers - lots of sunflowers in Bulgaria!












I was waiting for the cyclists so I could join them after having gone ahead to mark the road for the first 20km. The front crew of the group usually rode with one thing in mind - getting to the end of the day's ride - on this day (the longest day I've ever riden - 145 km) I stayed with them for the first 85 Km, then I decided it was time to stop and smell the flowers . . . and fix my flat :-)














This part of the ride reminded me of S. Spain, with the trees and arid landscape













We ended this long day in Nessebar, a tiny fishing village (you can see the old town here) that has become a huge Black Sea resort town! 

Bucharest Fotos

I haven't figured out how to put captions with pictures soooo - Below you find



My mother with one of the many tiny orthodox churches in Bucharest








Every city wants to be like Paris - the Arc de Triumph!







Ceacescu's Palace - 2nd largest in the world after the Pentagon. This sucked up most of Romania's wealth. As someone asked during our guided tour "how did he pay for this" another person piped up - "with his life"!



The view from the terrace of the Palace. In the back you can see the Ceacescu's attempt at creating a Civic Center - an area where government was centralized the citizen's lived next to it. He destroyed most of the old town (although some churches still are interspered between the ugle apartment buildings).