Lord Kinross Room, Pera Palace, Istanbul, 26th April 1997
Early breakfast and a taxi to the Grand Bazaar. It should have been a short ride across the Karakoy (Galata) Bridge and then a few streets through the centre, but the driver takes the long way round, over the Ataturk Bridge. I ask, ‘Why?’ The driver raises his palms and shrugs, ‘Traffic’. It sounds like an excuse, still, we get to see the city walls and the Sea of Marmora from Kennedy Caddesi and it’s only £5, or one million lira – as someone said at breakfast, ‘Anything less than six noughts isn’t very much.’
Grand Bazaar, a place with ancient roots restored and rebuilt through the 16th to 19th Centuries. It’s busy and, though exotic to our western eyes, the seemingly endless array of jewelers, shoemakers, tailors and dressmakers, carpet sellers and tourist shops palls quickly. There is something meretricious about it, despite the long history and being one of the most famous markets in the world.
Not so the nearby the Ic Cebeci Han of copper smiths. A place of light and shade, of tapping hammers and murmured conversation over glasses of tea. A place of workaday cooking pans, gleaming finely chased trays and elegant swan-necked coffee pots. A place of finials made to adorn mosques, the three orbs for the religions of the Book and a crescent moon for the greatness of the creator.
Lunch of freshly grilled sardines on steps near the Karakoy Bridge. As we finish eating a young tout approaches.
‘River trip on the Bosphorus,’ he smiles
‘How much?’
‘150,000 lira.’
He is quickly pulled away for a conference with someone, who might be his father. The older man comes over.
‘You are English?’
‘Yes.’
‘Sorry, mistake – 500,000 each, 1,000,000 for two, OK?’ He’s charmingly unembarrassed.
‘Yes,’ I agree.
On the boat I see him give two Turkish women 700,000 lira change for a 1,000,000 lira note. One rate for tourists, another for locals – it seems fair.