Wandering the streets

Colorful houses and shops lined the cobblestone streets.
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We tried to find the hippodrome, but were slightly misinformed as the only parts left are the obeslisk and Serpent's Column.  So seeing a few colorful buildings down a side street, we started wandering.  In the Old section of the city, there are endless neighborhoods of cobblestone streets and colorful wooden houses.

Eventually we managed to walk through a bazaar and spend all of our Turkish lire on some tapestries, which reminded us that we still hadn't been to the Grand Bazaar.  After more walking and getting lost, we finally took a cab, only to find out that most of the Bazaar is closed on Sundays. 

Shopping

A happy pedestrian square we found while looking for the Grand Bazaar.
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We walked along the shops that were open, then searched for lunch.  We sat at a window table overlooking the street and had a long, leisurely lunch.  This turned out to be a bad things, as we were looking at a carpet store for hours.

Naturally, we checked out the store after lunch.  They had really beautiful tribal rugs.  We went through the whole hospitality thing, had some apple tea, and started talking carpets.  The guy pointed out all the different symbols, what type of plants were used for each color, and the difference between all wool and synthetic rugs.  As I'm finding out, there's a lot to learn about the carpet industry.  Most in these store were older, so the colors were nicely blended and muted with the age.  After a couple hours here, I bought two, JT bought one and we were definitely done shopping.