Istanbul - Grand Bazaar

A treasure trove! I'd like to hang lanterns like this in my hallway. We were in Istanbul briefly for work and stayed on for a couple of days to see friends. Had a wander around Grand Bazaar and I resisted the urge to buy lanterns - mainly because I couldn't choose just one!

I realised with horror that I was last in Istanbul nearly 20 years ago when I was closer in age to D than I am to my age today..... I'm definitely getting old! Istanbul seems very different to what I remember from then. It was partly the weather. In February it's cool and grey whereas August is hot and steamy. It's probably that Istanbul has also changed, but mostly I expect that the difference is that when I first went to Turkey it was one of the few non-European countries that I'd been too - it felt very exotic to me then. Forward on 20 years and it feels almost like home compared to..... well anywhere in South Asia for example. It was nice to remember one of my first experiences of travelling outside Europe and how exciting and new everything was. I'm a bit more jaded now and tend to compare things to past experiences ("it's like an colonial Latin America in India" about Panjim in Goa) whereas then I travelled and saw things unlike anything I'd experienced before. Isn't childhood wonderful?!