Our first visit to Turkey we’d only stopped in the city airport on our way to Ephesus, but having a brutally long layover we had a chance to learn more about the city we wouldn’t be seeing.

To read about the hustle and bustle of the largest open air bazaar in the world, the exotic spices of the markets, and the ancient Blue Mosque and Hagia Sophia, well we decided right then that we had to come back.

Fast forward one year later, and I found myself once again in the airport, with several hours to kill before Emele arrived so it was straight to the hotel…unfortunately sans luggage, (which as an aside: always pack a change of clothes with you on the airplane). Anyway, with nothing to do other than give the airport the information for when my bag did arrive, I headed to the hotel.

We stayed at Hotel Dersaadet Istanbul, which was located right in the center of the historical area, walking distance from many of the major sites like Hagia Sophia, not to mention around the corner from a smaller bazaar. In fact we would later have walked through that area so often, we’d come to recognize and chat with the local shop owners. As luck would have it, or the lack thereof, we had arrived a day before the start of Ramadan. I remember walking by the entrance with Emele and peaking in, wanting to go and wander through, the throngs of people busy doing their shopping, but we were meeting another friend and knew she would want to see it too so decided to go the next day.

To our dismay the bazaar, that we’d been so eager to explore the day before was closed and would remain so for the remainder of our time in Istanbul. To walk up to those massive doors of the Grand Bazaar only to discover them locked tight was a huge disappointment, as if some secret land of mysterious wonder lay just behind but so utterly beyond our reach. But it also afforded us a different experience as the city took on a somber mood of reverence in observance of the Islamic holiday. To hear the call to prayer throughout the city and see the shopkeepers rush off to the Mosque for prayer, though perhaps unremarkable to residents, was something of an enchanting memory. And while we have yet to walk through those beckoning gates of Kapalıçarşı, our hunch is that our daily jaunts nearby brought with it a more intimate look into Istanbul.