Today we went to the archaeological museum inside Topkapı Palace. We saw the oldest treaty, the Treaty of Kadesh between the Egyptians and the Hittites. After the museum we went to the Grand Bazaar (which is similar to Eastern Market except the shops are more permanent and some have AC). At the grand bazaar, my mom and I haggled for a knock-off (but a good knock-off) Rolex. It originally was 180 TL (Turkish Lira), after some haggling he lowered it to his "reasonable price" of 125 TL. We said this was still too much, he asked what we would pay for it, we offered 80 TL. He declined this and as we were about to walk away, he lowered it to 115 TL. We still were not willing to pay that much, and at that point he got a little angry and threw his calculator down with the price of 100 TL. We accepted and now I am the proud owner of a well-made counterfeit Rolex.
While we were looking for counterfeit Rolexes, we came across a store which I believed was selling the watches I was looking for. When I asked for the price, I soon learned they were real, expensive, brand name watches (the one I was looking at was 3200 TL)
Another interesting story: this morning we took 2 taxis (one isn't big enough) to the ferry again (it is the quickest way to downtown). Well, it turns out that cab drivers don't understand a lot of English and while one of our cabs (the one with me, Alex, and my mom) went to the correct ferry station for a 20 TL ride, the other taxi (with John, Yuri, and my dad) went to the corresponding ferry station on the other side of the city, a long 40 minute, 70 TL ride. It took us about an hour and fifteen minutes to regroup by sending one person (Alex) across on the ferry to find the others, while the others stayed to see if they would show up at the other station.
Unfortunately we were not able to go to the Haghia Sophia-the line was out the door, out the gate, around the street corner and down the road a long way. We decided not to wait in line in the boiling heat for hours because we had other things on the agenda (the Haghia Sophia was supposed to be our first stop). We were also not able to go to the Museum of Calligraphy because we couldn't find the building and we believed it to be the one to be under construction and proceeded to the Great Bazaar.
This evening we attended the IDEA Debate opening ceremonies. They served a buffet-style dinner and we sat with the Mongolian team. We begin the debate tournament tomorrow at 7:30 am and will end around 9:00 pm.
7/19/11
-Nicholas Tolksdorf
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