I haven't actually spent a great deal of time in Istanbul since I've been here. (I've spent two weekends traveling, one on an island, and one just hanging out.) So yesterday seemed like a great time to take advantage of my friends' expertise and finally figure out Turkish transportation. Of course, I had greatly overestimated my friends' knowledge...
To get to Sariyer, the village that my school is in, you take a minibus known as a dolmuş, a word that literally means "filled." Drivers will continue to open the doors no matter how many people are already packed in; it's up to customers to decide if there's room to get on. From Sariyer, we took another dolmuş to the metro. We took the metro to the Taksim, got on a finicular (a kind of one-stop metro, I guess), then took the tram to the Spice Bazaar. All in all, we took probably 3 more modes of transportation than we needed to. But it was educational, to say the least!
The Spice Bazaar is good fun; it's smaller than the Grand Bazaar, more reasonably priced, and generally less overwhelming. It also smells fantastic, and you can find interesting goods ranging from "love tea" to Turkish delight. I didn't buy anything, but I'm sure I'll be back before the end of the semester!
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