Turkey time!

I spent yesterday wandering around a very small section of the ginormous city of Istanbul! We went to the grand bazaar where they sold everything, including jewelry, gold, ornate oriental rugs, silverware, leather, awesome lamps and so much more. Outside of the building housing the grand bazaar
was a series of streets where less souvenir like goods were sold including cheap toys and stuffed animals, mannequins, coat hangers, cleaning supplies, belts, and guns. Then after that came the spice market! The coolest market of all! Saffron is 3turksih lira (about $1.50) for a sizeabe bag of it. They have every spice I've ever seen and so many more
I never knew existed. I will bring back some mystery ingredients for our chopped amateurs addition (although McCall is not exactly going to be an amateur after this week). We also wandered into some mosques. There are so many and they are all so impressive. Huge structures with ornate mosaic inside decorations that must have taken hundreds of years (and probably did actually). There are so many little tea shops and sweet shops selling all kinda of impressive looking delicate little candies and every conceivable form of baklava. I am switching from coffee to tea here. We sampled some baklava yesterday yummy... Then I spent yesterday night watching the Croatia-Spain soccer game at a hookah bar with Evan, drinking tea on the busy pedestrian street near our hotel (which is awesome in itself, there is a sweet rooftop area to relax. Rooftop bar/cafe areas are a great use of space). In off for another day adventuring now! I love you all