Next day we arose nice and early ready for our big day (again for some). Hannah greeted us at breakfast, "I have a great idea, lets go walk around today until we are exhausted!" Ariane and I looked at each other not daring to say what we both felt, legs on fire etc "so tomorrow we can hardly walk" Hannah continued. We were about to add something, but didn’t.
Hannah started getting excited about the Grand Bazaar regaling us with stories about how we are going to get mobbed by 1000's of people telling and vying for our attention, "It'll be crazy guys!" I said we should wait until later and it will be real busy and better but by now she was chaffing at the bit. "Lets go, Lets go" said a hundred thousand times tends to get one moving. We arrived at the Grand Bazaar and were greeted by a small trickle of people and shop keepers more interested in picking their finger nails and looking bored than greeting. You would think Hannah would learn but she doesn’t. It's amusing watching her imagine things though.
We wandered around the place but didn’t buy anything. Crossed a bridge and walked around these back streets and saw real Turkish life. Was interesting not to see tourists. Took some pictures and wandered listening to a story by Ariane about a hungry midget in midget city who had to go to Siberia to get something to eat. Yes we did wonder what someone had slipped into her coke.
We watched the sun go down and Ariane played with some rabid kittens. Found a cat with a glass marble eye. I am disturbed now even thinking about it. I think it sold one eye to Satan personally. Hannah thinks it one of those new Comi robot spying eye cats. I tend to maybe agree. I took a picture and hoped the Comi's didn’t see my face properly. Maybe the CIA will be interested.
Way back was crazy and I deliberated at whether I should tell my mother but seeing as I am writing this out of Turkey she can hear it now. We were walking on a bridge and this gang war broke out about 20m away involving about 60 men. People were beating each other with chair legs and chains and someone pulled out a gun. I asked Hannah to start filming but she didn’t, probably a good idea retrospectively. Anyway we hear bangs and we were sticking out heads out say "wow, why would someone be firing a cap gun for?", "yeah weird would do much you'd think." Soon dawned on us, when everyone was lying flat on the ground around us and yelling at us stupid tourists to get down, that it might have been a real gun. So we got down. Although I kept looking because it was fascinating. The 2 groups moved away and I saw the gang pick up knives and throw them into the water. Riot police soon arrived dressed like a baseball team and armed with not much more than a baton and a radio between them and basically got the crap beaten out of themselves. Soon more police came and the situation calmed down and the two gangs disappeared. I took 2 pictures but it was getting dark and you cant see much. It was quite amazing though. I was quite safe though except when the dude was firing his gun. No one got hit because he fired into the wall and the air.
That night I was reading a book and someone invited me to their table which was 3 Turkish boys and a Czech and 2 Slovenian girls. One of the Turkish boys was clearly making one of the girls quite uncomfortable and was trying to get rescued but I didn’t feel like it. Probably lucky in the end because that night Hannah was going mental because the man next to her bed was snoring so loudly. She didn’t wake him up, but it was him, which was lucky because he had a gun under his pillow. So a group discussion came to the conclusion that we would be nice to him. So we were nice to him from then on. That morning I kindly pointed out the snorer to Hannah so she could abuse him for a giggle but she didn’t. Turned out he was a policeman so we had nothing to worry about.