We had a lovely city-break trip to Istanbul last week. One of the highlights for me was taking a walk around the incredible bazars and markets. Our hotel which located right in a market district and we were short walks away from both the grand bazar and the Egyptian/spice bazar.
I particularly liked the street markets. These could be found in the old town, and as can be seen above lined many of the narrow streets, such that as you walked through them, they were crammed with stalls and shops selling just about anything you could imagine. In some streets they draped flags and sails across the street to help keep out the blazing sun like above.
Some of the street markets areas were grouped by item type, so for example around our hotel there were lots of shops and stalls for clothes and fabric.
And even then, there would be additional shops inside many of the buildings, like the one above which was mostly for fabrics and the like.
The prices were pretty excellent, and you were encouraged to haggle, but to be honest, we were useless at that, and nearly always ended up paying the advertised price ! But we loved just wandering around and seeing what was for sale. It was so different to what we see here in the UK, and the markets covered huge areas of the town.
Some sellers were quite specialist - I particularly liked the display for the one above - wheels !
We were also close to a lot of food stalls and shops which were located around the outside of the Egyptian/Spice bazar. The brick building above is the bazar, with the new mosque making an appearance behind it. You can see the row of food shops on the outside of the bazar.
They had olives like I'd never seen (above) - look at all of those different coloured ones - I've no idea what the different colours were ! I've only seen black and olive green ones before.
And the spices looked pretty cool too !
The Egyptian/Spice bazar was quite beautiful and a bit more up-market, I guess noting that it was quite well located to be a draw for tourists. Prices were a little higher in here, with the goods being sold aimed more at tourists then your everyday Istanbul person.
It really was quite an impressive place - and also quite handy as a shortcut, as it was quite cool inside, allowing you to escape from the mid-day sun !
We also visited the Grand Bazar which was mind bogglingly huge. It has over 4000 shops !!! Yes, that number is correct - I havent added an extra zero by mistake. Although it has to be remembered that Istanbul is a city of 20 Million people - so thats a lot of people looking for a good deal !
The grand bazar was lovely inside (above) but not aimed at tourists particularly. There were a lot of shops selling food, clothes, fabrics and gold. We were told that gold is a big thing in the grand bazar and there was a lot of shops selling it. Gold is not as inflationary as the Turkish Lira and hence many people will buy gold to help protect against inflation. It is also common to give it as wedding gifts (I wish they had had that idea here in the UK when me and my wife got married !!!). We were told that the grand bazar was a very trust worthy place to buy gold, because that is where all the locals would go to buy theirs.
It really was quite incredible to wander around the bazar - noting it is also quite old dating from around 1455 !
We were told that the stalls just outside the grand bazar were among the best for bargains in the city - I guess because they didnt have the overheads of being located inside the bazar.
It really was lovely just wandering around and seeing what was on sale.
And the streets go through quite a remarkable transformation during the day. Thats one of the same market streets above near where we stayed at about 9pm - and as can be seen it was deserted and all packed up - quite a change !
What an awesome experience, and it really did help us to get some pretty impressive step counts in each day while we were there !!! The best we managed was just over 33,000 on our last day !
What a city and what a great way to enjoy a walk !
