29 October - Monday - Turkish Independence Day. Earl has me up at 7am to get breakfast at the buffet at the hotel. Why so early? Earl’s friends from Bulgaria came to town to visit so we met them at 10am. We walked around looking for the parade (never found it) and visited the Spice Market (closed for the holiday) and the Grand Bazaar (also closed for the holiday). At least we found the pet stores.
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| Decorations for National Day. |
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| Spices, olives and dried tomatoes |
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| Leeches for Sale |
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| Other strange offal |
I missed the opportunity to take a photograph of the 4 story high banner of Attaturk (the father) in Tacsim Square. It’s hard to stop and take photos when the rest of your group is rapidly walking away from you. Back at the Nippon, they changed out our grand suite room for something a bit more modest with a wonderful view of the inner duct wall -- the a/c doesn’t appear to work either.
In the evening, Vic’s millionaire friend treated us to a BBQ in his villa terrace on the Asian side of the Bosporus. He picked us up in his car and then stopped at the local market. Ordered meat which the butchers trimmed and spiced for the BBQ. We watched the fireworks over dinner. It was an amazing display that lasted over 15 minutes. I understand they do these fireworks 3 times a year.
30 October - Tuesday - Stamp Show - The reason for being in Istanbul.
Earl’s anxious to get up and going. I’m not so crazy about getting up so early for breakfast. There’s a big international book fair taking place in the same place as the stamp exhibition so we can ride the free bus there. Turns out it’s an hour bus ride to get to the convention center. Checked out the book fair and found a nice Chinese intermediate language book with CD. However, they want $24 for it, nevermind. In the evening, Earl’s friend, Pinar, treated us and some other friends to a nice fish dinner at Poseidon in the upscale north district by the Bosphorus. Tried the stuffed mussels which were very nicely flavored with pine nuts.
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31 October - Wednesday
Earl’s tired so he lets us sleep until 9. We walk down to visit the Military Museum which he remembered being much bigger from his last trip there ten years ago. Caught the Mehta military band performance.
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| Bronze Decorative Canon |
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Mehter Band |
There’s some interesting exhibits depicting the fall of Constantinople back in 1453. The Byzantines had a huge chain across the Golden Horn to keep raiding ships out so the Turks had actually rolled their ships acrossed greased logs to circumvent it. Pieces of the original chain were on display. We had a late lunch of moussaka and stuffed peppers at the neighborhood lokanta where the owner showed off his daughter and gave us a cornmeal dessert and tea. The stamp show hosted a free dinner at Kervansaray Night Club that evening. There was folk dancing, two belly dancers and an entertainer who sang songs from the various countries represented in our group. He asked me for my country and deciding quickly that America or Korea wouldn’t work, I said Hungary. He then launched into the most popular Hungarian folk tune -- Ose Semp which I happily knew and could sing along. Earl said he couldn’t tell the difference between the Black Sea folk dancers and Greek dancers. The belly dancers were very skinny. I remember the first belly dancer I met back in grade school said that to properly belly dance one needs a bit of a belly.