Are you serious?

This past Wednesday the weather was beautiful and a few of the guys in the office went golfing. A few other girls and I decided to go see the Rumelihisarı which is a fortress on the Europe side built in 1452. You can go in and explore the fortress. Here is a picture of it from the Bosphorous. We also planed to go to a starbucks with a great view of the Bosphorous afterwards.

I went in to the office early to get some work done. Then I rode a bus to meet one of the ladies at the iskele (boat dock). The other lady ended up not being able to make it. We were planning on meeting two other girls at the fortress later on. Sherree and I proceeded to take the boat to the other side and then a bus to the Rumelihisarı. While on the bus we got a call from the other girl saying she was on the bus and missed the stop which caused her to miss the boat across. The next boat would make her a few hours late, so we just planned to meet them at starbucks. We thought of a way on public that she could get to us in time, so we called back and forth for 30 minutes or so until we decided to just go ahead and go into the fortress and meet them when they got there. We got up to the Rumelihisarı and we saw this sign....
...I don't know if you can read the writing, but on the bottom of the sign it says the hours it is open and the phrase "except on Wednedsay" You might not remember, but this happened to be a Wednesday. Well, now what do we do? We called the other girl to tell her and then decided to go to the Dolmabahçe Palace, which is another touristy site I hadn't seen yet. At this point my phone is about to die and Sherree's had died earlier that day. We made a few calls to see if the other girls wanted to meet us there and to see what time it was open. Now it is 3:20 and it should be about a 20 minute bus ride back to the palace. They were open and quit letting people in at 4:00. So we got in a bus and head that direction. We got off the bus at 3:55 which is near the palace and walked fast to get there. We were let inside the gardens through the security, and we took our time walking through the gardens. When we got about 10 feet from the door they closed it right in front of our faces. It was crazy. We took our pictures and left. Here is a picture of the front of the palace and the closed door at the Dolmabahçe Palace.

Now we were thinking that we couldnt end the day now and just go home. That would be anticlimactic. So we decide to go to a nearby starbucks. We enjoyed our frappaccinos and had a great time even though it wasnt the original starbucks on the itinerary. It wasnt right on the water, but good enough at that point.

What a day. To add to it, Sherree had taken a lot of pictures to document me trying to visit more tourist sites before I move. However, it turns out that when she got home none of them turned out. I wasn't really surprised given the events of the day.

Spice Pazar

We went to the Spice pazar a few days ago. It is just a covered market. It is a tourist place, but many locals go there to buy things as well. They sell all types of things like scarves, dishes, gardening tools, bracelets, turkish delight, kitchen utensils, tshirts, of course spices, and so much more. The streets just go on and on and are filled with people. Here are a few pictures of the vendors.












You can see the scarves above and the spices to the left and the hand painted dishes on the right.

The vendors always try to get you to buy things. I just ignore them because I dont like talking to them. They like practicing their english on everyone who walks by. They say interesting things like 'yes please' asking you to come into their store. It took us forever to figure out what they were talking about. We finally figured out that people probably walk by and say 'no thank you' so that is just the opposite. You never really know what they are going to say to you.

5 times a day

This is a video of the call to prayer that comes from the speakers of every mosque five times a day. You can usually hear multiple ones going at the same time. It eventually becomes normal and you dont really notice it anymore. This is from the balcony at my office. The other side of the office has a much better view, but you can see a big mall to the right of the mosque, a basketball court, and a whole lot of apartments.