Originally when I planned this trip, this day was going to be only a travel day.\u00a0 However, because of the post-Ramadan celebration it turned out that the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul would be closed until the absolute last day we were there.\u00a0 That meant that we\u2019d have to catch it just before we left for the airport.\u00a0 It opened at 8:30 on Monday, so we got an early start and arrived there around eight.\u00a0 I thought that the place would be huge and that they wouldn\u2019t really care if the people entering were staff or not, but they had guards posted at each gate and they recognized the staff apparently.\u00a0 There was nothing for us to do but go find a shady place to sit and to kill a half hour.\u00a0 Once we got inside, things were just opening up.\u00a0 I was hoping for something dramatic, but actually it was similar to other markets that we had already explored in Istanbul.\u00a0 There seemed to be a certain pattern to it – each block had a few clothes shops, a lamp shop, a pottery and plate shop, a jewelry shop, and a spice\/food shop.\u00a0 The market was made up of hundreds of blocks like that, so there wasn\u2019t that much variety if you kept walking.\u00a0 The more you saw, the more you saw the pattern behind it.\u00a0 Still, we had fun walking around, and seeing the shopkeepers setting up for the day and the camaraderie that they shared was worth the trip.<\/p>\n
So we went on back to the hotel, grabbed our suitcase, ate a quick breakfast, and then had the hotel call us a cab to take us to the airport.\u00a0 The trip to airport was smooth and very quick.\u00a0 We took the train and had transferred once when we arrived, so it was our first time to see exactly where the airport was in relation to our hotel.\u00a0 It was a little expensive (48 Turkish lira) but worth it to rest our legs a little after the big walking day yesterday.\u00a0 Strangely, during the taxi ride our hotel called the cab and asked us for our credit card information again.\u00a0 I\u2019m still not sure why they would need it, and why they didn\u2019t ask us while we were still there, but there it was – we were reading off our credit card number to the hotel clerk over the taxi cab driver\u2019s cell phone.\u00a0 I hope he doesn\u2019t have a good memory.<\/p>\n
At the airport the check-in was a piece of cake, and we had a little time to kill.\u00a0 Our flight was at 1:30 pm to Madrid, and it went pretty smoothly.\u00a0 From Madrid we changed to the domestic terminal using a bus to catch our next flight on Iberian Airlines.\u00a0 The domestic terminal design looked almost exactly the same as the Kansai airport back in Osaka.\u00a0 Maybe the same architect?\u00a0 We had lots of time to kill here, as we were taking an evening flight to Granada.\u00a0 Unfortunately there weren\u2019t many restaurants, and the terminal seemed to be under construction so that limited our options even more.\u00a0 We did manage to find a cafeteria, and we had a wonderful meal of tortilla Espana and quiche with a half bottle of red wine.\u00a0 At the cafeteria cash register the cashier asked if we wanted them to open the bottle, and since I wasn\u2019t carrying an opener of course we said yes.\u00a0 They whipped out a corkscrew and popped the bottle for us, and gave us a couple of nice glasses too.\u00a0 The wine was much better than I expected.\u00a0 Welcome to Spain!<\/p>\n
It was finally time to head for the gate, so we went through security on the way.\u00a0 Kuniko put her hat through the x-ray machine per the staff request, and since it was so light it was brushed off and stayed inside the machine.\u00a0 I tried to be helpful by telling the security staff in my best Spanish, but my Spanish was a little rough.\u00a0 I ended up saying \u201cMy wife\u2019s head is inside that machine.\u201d\u00a0 I\u2019m lucky I wasn\u2019t arrested right there.\u00a0 But they could clearly see that my wife\u2019s head was right there on her shoulders, and they put it together.\u00a0 Belly laughs all around and I learned that it will take a while to get used to using Spanish again.<\/p>\n
We reached the gate but apparently the flight was delayed another hour.\u00a0 We had lots of time to walk around, read, and people watch.\u00a0 Finally caught the flight, and arrived in Granada after only 45 minutes.\u00a0 It was a very small plane, and a very small airport, so some of the luggage handlers started putting down luggage right out there on the runway after we landed.\u00a0 Some passengers thought it was their chance to grab them early, but the staff freaked out and shouted at them to go to the terminal and wait.\u00a0 So close, yet so far, I guess.<\/p>\n
Once we got our bag we found our pre-arranged driver waiting for us.\u00a0 It was a taxi driver, and he drove us into town at light speed.\u00a0 We didn\u2019t speak at all, and we finally arrived at our hotel around midnight.\u00a0 Fortunately the owner of the hotel was waiting up for us, and he showed us to our room.\u00a0 The place was in a very old neighborhood but decorated very nicely in kind of an Arabic style.\u00a0 He gave us all the info we needed for the next day, and then left us to hit the sack.\u00a0 It was another busy day of travel.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Originally when I planned this trip, this day was going to be only a travel day.\u00a0 However, because of the post-Ramadan celebration it turned out that the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul would be closed until the absolute last day we were there.\u00a0 That meant that we\u2019d have to catch it just before we left for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2716","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pOpl7-HO","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2716","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2716"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2716\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2716"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2716"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2716"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}