We checked out of the hotel and, leaving our baggage in the lobby, set off for a final foot-slog around Istanbul. We wandered down the (too) familiar road to the station, passed the floating bridge and then cut inland towards the covered bazaar. We wove through busy but interesting streets with army surplus shops and all manner of plastic and metal goods. This we enjoyed, but we entered the glossy artificial world of the covered market and tired rapidly of the beckoning, calling merchants and seedy ne’er-do-wells.
The Grand Bazaar (Turkish: Kapalıçarşı, meaning ‘Covered Market’; also Büyük Çarşı, meaning ‘Grand Market’) in Istanbul is one of the largest and oldest covered markets in the world, with 61 covered streets and over 4,000 shops on a total area of 30,700 metres, attracting between 250,000 and 400,000 visitors daily.
We had our boots polished by the banks of shoe-shine men that lined the station fore-court, and these shone in the sun as we settled at the çay tables by the Blue Mosque. We went on to kill time by reading our books (Both of us now reading “Lord of the Rings”) and several visits, for breakfast and cups of tea, to the legendary “Pudding Shop”. Now in the hotel lobby we await the bus that will convey us to the mystical continent of Asia.
The time came for us to leave and I waited with the bags in the square outside the travel agent while George went inside to find out the score. He came out, his face grim whilst a foul mood abated. The bus had been cancelled and we must wait until Saturday. What a bastard! We had already spent too long kicking our heels in this accursed place. We booked back into our hotel, in a new cell on the third floor, and miserably debated how to spend the next two days.
Our gloom dispersed as we realised that Fate had cast the die and we, as mere mortals, could not change it’s fall. We shed our heavy boots and set of on a new constitutional circuit. We stopped and sat on the sea wall south of the Sultanahmet and watched the sun go down in a band of vivid orange and pink.
Onwards we roved to the last port of call of yesterday evening and polished off a trio of potent beers (+1 more for me to satiate my alcoholic calling) before hitting Joe’s late night snack stall in an attempt to demolish his stock of pancakes. Back at the hotel our desire to copulate with members of the opposite sex were rekindled by sound of husky female voices outside our door. And so to bed.
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