L took me to the spice bazaar and we sat in the back of a spice shop where his friend M works. He gave us apple tea, pomegranite tea and Turkish delights, and we talked and joked. We tried to help him sell to Westerners by standing near the mouth of the shop next to the mountains of colorful spices and exclaiming things loudly to each other, like "Wow! Can you believe the quality of this cumin?" and "The saffron is much cheaper here than at the other shop!" We walked through the grand bazaar as well, saw the Hagia Sophia and the Blue Mosque, and walked the grounds of the Hippedrome. EDUCATIONAL INFO WARNING: We stopped at the Obelisk of Theodosius, around which they used to race horses. Its an Egyptian obelisk originally belonging to pharaoh Tutmoses III, and was stolen by Roman emperor Constantius II (along with another obelisk), and taken up the Nile to Rome to honor himself and his 20 years of rule (as of 357). The obelisk remained in Alexandria until 390, when Theodosius I brought it to Constantinople and into the Hippedrone. During one of the transportations or re-erectings of the obelisk it cracked in two, and half was lost at sea, so only the remaining half stands in the Hippedrone. L and I also saw the spiral bronze base of a "three-headed serpent sculpture" which, at the time of our viewing, was uttlerly snakeless.
Then we sat on a bench and were misted by the fountains given to Turkey by Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany in 1901.
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