Antique shopping
Similar Istanbul stores are often all grouped together. Find a music store and you may see ten others in the same block. So we went to an area of antique shops, down (and up) a big hill. Turns out there's a fine line here between Antiks and junk. Many big items were outdoors -- old doors, old marble lawn and garden statuary, architectural columns and carvings -- sometimes adorned with lovely wisteria.
In the grocery store
There are no marked prices. The clerk just adds your items on a calculator and shows you the total. Or for small purchases he may simply pick the correct amount from the money you offer him in your hand. What can you do but trust him? Luckily, the totals always seem reasonable. When asking him whether the soap product was for the dishwasher or clothes washer, it was easy to play charades for the clerk. Luckily he then understood “toilet paper” so we didn’t have to pantomime that.
Washing clothes
The buttons on our washing machine look conventional enough. But of course the words are in Turkish and the machine itself is made in Russia. So we were perplexed after two hours of washing that the machine hadn’t advanced to rinse or spin. An email to the management (we have no phone) immediately brought Kadir to our door, who assured us it would take “just five more minutes.” Four hours later and one more visit from Kadir, the thing spun a little and quit. So our clothes are clean, but what happened? Ah yes, the joys of traveling independently.
Turkish traffic
I’d rather stick needles in my eyes than drive in Istanbul. After Moscow, Istanbul is said to have the world’s worst traffic gridlock. Most streets are barely wide enough for just one car with no stop signs or lights. Horns blare, nobody gives an inch. So traffic just crawls, which is OK with us because vehicles are often only inches away from us or we’re crossing between stopped (we hoped) cars. One sees Honda Civics (they look huge here) but not Accords, likewise Toyota Corollas but not Camrys. Lots of Volkswagens, all diesels, but not one Jetta wagon like ours. Probably because very few people own a car, the streets are teeming with taxis; sometimes that’s all you see, mostly little Fiats. Although gas apparently costs over $9/gallon, "Taksis" are pretty cheap. But one cabbie brazenly asked for US$10 when his meter said only 7 Turkish Lira (= $4), which we paid. No tip!
No smoking
It must be against the law to smoke in public places because people occasionally step outside an office or restaurant to light up. It’s not as bad as Paris, however, where it could be so smokey in front of a bistro that the only way to get a breath of fresh air was to go inside.
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