During your first moments walking through the streets of Istanbul, you feel as if all Turkish people are natural born salespeople. They lure you into their store with free tasters, tempting you to splurge. Once inside you are treated as an old friend, a member of the family not a stranger off the street. After further exploration throughout the streets, you realise they may be great salespeople, but they are also very willing to give you a hand, whether providing directions, some sort of produce or even just to make you smile and brighten up your day. They love their country and just want you to love it the same.
There almost seems to be no limit to how far the people of Istanbul will go to help you. Looking for water? Don’t fret: someone will produce it for you even if they’re selling bracelets in the streets, at the very least they will provide you with directions. Attempting to use the public transport system and stuck on how to use the ticket system for the Metro or Tramway? Don’t worry: someone sure enough will appear and be your saviour.
Beginning day 2 of exploring Istanbul I came up with a theory: you can enter any store in Istanbul and receive assistance. Walking through the streets searching for a great place for food and drink, the others with me were skeptical to the truth of my theory: To test my theory, I insisted that we enter the very next carpet store for advice. They agreed with a mild fit of laughter, ready for my theory to fail. The streets of Istanbul are littered with carpet shops, easily identifiable by the beautiful rugs draped outside and the owner proudly sitting out the front relaxing and enjoying the day with a glass of apple tea and usually one or two friends. So finding one was not going to be hard.
Before long we had stumbled across a carpet store, the perfect cliche to the image I just painted and my companions were obliged to test my theory. With barely the words out of my mouth, we were whisked through a back door of the shop and directed to a stairscase and told “roof”. After climbing to the very top, we were all delightfully surprised. Not only had we reached our goal of food and drink but we had been blessed with the most sensational views. The rooftop held a 360 degree view with undisturbed vistas of the Blue Mosque, Aya Sofia and the Bosphorus.
We took a seat and received our menus and a new test for the theory arose. With one of the group not a fan of seafood and a solely seafood menu in front of u,s we thought it only natural to enquire. The waiter agreed with no hesitation to the request and, when our meals were brought out, a dish of succulent lamb cutlets was produced. I settled for a simple dish of grilled calamari and was highly satisfied as the pieces melted in my mouth.
I took extra pleasure in the view and beautiful meal as my Carpet Shop Theory was proven to be a success.