Kauffman Commentary

The best time to visit the Grand Bazaar is when it opens at 8:30. Our expectation was that the bazaar would be like the markets in other large European or Asian cities. It was not, the aisles were wide and clean with 4,000 shops. They were somewhat organized by type, scarves, shoes, clothes, bath accessories, buttons, sheets and much more. This bazaar opened during the Ottoman Empire in 1455. Per day the bazaar sees 250,000 – 400,000 visitors. We had some apple tea that the shop owner ordered from a tea man and they bring it straight to the shop. They are everywhere carrying the tea. After 3 hours of shopping we were glad to leave because it was getting crowded. We took a quick walk through the spice market on the way back to the tram.

It took some work, but we found a laundry mat. It was located in a hilly part of new town. So we burned off a few pounds carrying our dirty laundry.

We booked a tour of the Dolmabahçe Palace, basically to skip the line. It turned out that at the 3:30 time we could have just gone by ourselves and it would have been basically what the got from the Viator tour. This palace was the newer residence for the Sultans after the Topkopi palace from 1856 to 1922. Then it became the residence for Atatürk for four years after the republic formed in 1923. No pictures were allowed in the palace, but it has the biggest chandelier in the world in the Grand Ceremonial Hall.

Known as the father of Turkey, Kemal Atatürk gets high praise from the Turkish people today. Some of his reforms were to abolish the Sultanate, move the capital to a more central location in Ankara, adopt a constitution, end polygamy, change the Turkish alphabet, give women the right to vote and make Sunday a weekly holiday.

This evening we had dinner at our hotel. The restaurant where we had breakfast every morning is also a Michelin star restaurant for 2024. The presentation and tastes were the best. We sprung for the wine pairing and since we had never had Turkish wine, the sommelier talked us through each wine and showed us where the vineyard was located within Turkey. The country does not allow their vineyards to export, due to religious and government regulations. Our main course had three parts, prawn, chicken and lamb shoulder. All three were scrumptious. This was a good end to our time in Turkey. We fly out to Bucharest, Romania tomorrow.