Istanbul in an afternoon with Bill Smale Adventures. • Folksy Travel by Bill Smale

There is such a wide range of spices and every shop seems to have the same products available so you can browse and find a good price and exactly what you want. Why don’t you pick something you’ve never tried, take it home and see how it works.

This is one shop I visited which had fairly reasonable prices just in front of the main bazaar

The shops are very interesting to visit. Talk to the proprietors and see what they have.

It’s a very nice beautiful place

This area is just behind the main bazaar building where they have a lot more variety of things and definitely worth walking around. It is not just for tourists. Many local people are shopping here.

The building itself is very

This is where I had my first Turkish coffee sitting outside in the cold

my coffee

You will see these corn sellers all over Istanbul

After the bazaar I visited the banking museum which was free to enter and kind of interesting

This set up really takes me back to my grandmother’s house and my father’s typewriter

These are old piggy banks that are meant to be opened only by the bank

An old calculator

One account managers desk

Yeni mosque

The bank Museum

The signage is pretty good. Here you know where to get on the tram

This was actually next day at a coffee shop and it was very delicious fruit with cake below

You can see the tip box at the checkout counter. I asked a Turkish friend if tipping was customary and he said, “you can give a tip if you like”.

Meat and vegetables inside the roll of dough which was very delicious. The green cucumber pickles were nice and the yellow peppers are the very spicy, salty vinegar flavored ones which I really enjoy.