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| Entrance to the famous Grand Bazaar in Istanbul. Shop till you drop! |
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| The moment you step in, you'll be greeted by endless rows of stalls. Where do I even start? |
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| The Grand Bazaar feels more like Grand Labyrinth. Fortunately the stalls are clustered according to the type of goods they sell. |
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| Silk and fabric. So colourful. |
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| Exotic-looking ceramics. |
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| Awesome chess pieces! |
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| Suspended lamps. If you hang this at home you can get to see rainbow everyday. |
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| Souvenir items with Turkey's iconic Blue Eye. Ironically, this creepy looking eye is used as a charm to ward off the Evil Eye/bad luck. |
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| All these ornaments look really cool, but can't really fit well into Asian deco. |
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| Jewellery galore! Top silver, bottom gold! |
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| Wow wow...I need sunglasses to look at this. |
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| Doesn't this remind you of the treasures/loot in Ali Baba/Aladdin shows? Lol |
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| I want to order a magic carpet! |
We ended up not buying anything from Grand Bazaar because the souvenirs sold at the outside stalls were cheaper haha.
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| Taksim Square - the heart of modern Istanbul. Yes...this is the place where violent protests are happening recently. Sad... |
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| Uh...there seems to be some peaceful protest going on. Can't understand the Turkish words but there is a female gender symbol...Women rights? |
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| A long pedestrian shopping street connects from Taksim Square. It was a weekend anyway so it was really crowded. |
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| Hoho...a nostalgic tram runs through this street! Everyone has to 'siam' when this tram comes through. It's rather small though. |
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| There is a church along the shopping street, so we decided to stop by and take a rest. |
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| Nice interior! |
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| Actually Istanbul was our last stop for the 3-week adventure. By then we were so deprived of decent supermarket and shopping malls, that we decided to visit a local mall on the final days. |
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| These rides in the mall is so reminiscent of Singapore malls in the early 1990s. Nowadays you don't see such things in SG malls anymore... SG kids no longer enjoy such rides... |
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| Bread stuffed with lots of random vegetable fillings. Looks satiating and yummy! |
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| There are a lot of toppings to choose from! The cat is made from the pile of butter...how ingenious! |
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| More giant shopping malls! Apparently Carrefour is thriving here. |
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| Their gaming arcade consists mainly interactive, physical games/rides rather than the joystick-and-screen kind. |
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| 7D...so advanced? Lol. Includes the touch, smell, hear and taste dimensions?? |
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| Apparently such balloons are still popular with kids in Turkey. Such toys are probably extinct in Singapore. |
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| I like the deco of the supermarket. It really lifts your mood to shop. But we weren't intending to buy anything haha...just looking around for interesting products. |
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| Cin - a very addictive local snack. Someone please buy this back for me >_< |
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| They don't have to make things so transparent... |
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| Came across this amusement park on the way to window shopping. There are less than 5 people in the park but the rides will still operate if there is demand. =) |
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| The most thrilling and popular ride in the amusement park. It feels really scary just by looking at it because the ship oscillates to almost perpendicular to the ground! There were two boys who kept riding repeatedly, much to the pleasure of the operator. Plucked up the courage to ride and managed to snap a shot before I went @_@... Look at the video below. |
The two boys were sitting at the ends of the ship, raising both hands in joy somemore haha. I was grabbing tightly on the handlebar in fear of 'falling off' lol.
Visiting the shopping malls in Turkey gave me the nostalgic feel of SG malls in the early 1990s when I was still a small kid. There were lots of rides and toys that you probably won't commonly see in SG anymore. Most importantly the malls are pretty empty and this makes shopping a pleasure, much unlike the always-crowded malls in SG.
