I Don't Need a Carpet........Nor do I But I Have a Whole Shop Full of Them!

There is no end to the hustle and wit of a Sultanahmet multi lingual tout, be it for the ubiquitous carpets or just a cafe meal.
We slept in, intentionally after an after midnight arrival back in Istanbul from our Gallipoli sortie.

Today even though we were going to arriving at the venue later we thought we would try to view the Tokapi palace, the Sultan"s Palace it sits down near the water in behind Haggia Sophia and still a short walk from our hotel. As we approached we grappled with negotiating the very narrow streets gridlocked with massive European tour coaches, throbbing and rumbling at a standstill to keep their very necessary interiors suitable chilled as for the mere mortals on the outside it was very hot indeed.
The degree of crush didn't daunt us so we proceeded to find the ticket booth and pick up tkts for the palace and the all so important audio guide in English. This guide was to prove to be a great one triggered automatically and finally someone had configured the guide to the natural cadence of a saunter around with just the right amount of information at each station.

The palace is a massive affair and I guess just like the Imperial palace or Buckingham palace follows a formula of having outer courted areas for the services and increasingly isolated areas for the Sultan/King or Emperor as you get in towards the centre.

Tokapi was no different with magnificent imperial kitchens with the utensils to cook for 10,000 in the outer court yard area through to the Sultan's chambers and rooms from behind his guilded cage he could attend to the matters of state and then finally in the inner sanctum ..the Harem
home to his 300 concubines.

Fascinating to see the power the Ethiopian eunuchs wielded in the control of the women and hence the Sultan.

Many of the vaulted rooms holding the Treasury jewels or riches amassed by these dynasties were stifling hot and shoulder to shoulder with ardent pilgrims and tourists. The crowd would stop as a gigantic crush at anything mentioning Allah and a major bottle neck was the impression in clay of Muhammad's foot. All I can say is Birkenstocks wouldn't be a go but he might get lucky wit a super wide New Balance fitting if it was in stock.
All palaced out we moved back up into the main drag staying on the shady side of the streets even if it involved dodging the trams and coaches to achieve it.
Found a small restaurant of 6 tables crammed into an even smaller lane with an amazing amount of traffic down it and ordered a couple of Efes, the local pilsener style beer and what we thought would be fairly good chunks of meat on skewers with tomato cucumber and carrot and lettuce.
we received very small well cooked mini cubes off a skewer it is true but it appears after gentle interrogation that the picture beside the description we chose was for something else. Who cares it was great.

So good to see the purest expression of "can do" in action ask this guy for anything, say an espresso...no problem, he doesn't let on he doesn't have a machine just dispatches Sadam the boy up the street two shops who appears with your espresso without a hitch. All entirely seamless and integral to their business the way they share it around.
With 10.5 0n the pedometer we retired to the room picking up a few beers, some water and crackers from our local hole in the wall guy who now rummages to the back of the fridge for the really cold ones, because I always drop him the change to see him smile.
Spoke to Fletch as starting to get excited about joining them and sorted how to catchup upon landing at Dalaman. Tomorrow we plan to visit the Spice Market a bit further out and maybe one of the other large Mosques by the same architect as Haggia Sophia and said to be spectacular. Paul has given us a headsup on a Bar for tonight so will check it out and see how the night sky of Istanbul looks from there.