grand bazaar and stargazing

August 13, 2013: Istanbul day 2
I realized today that I only have one more time in Istanbul, wow. We have three more runs of the Barcelona/Venice cruise, and just one left of the Venice/Istanbul/Venice cruise. Doesn’t seem like all that should last two months, but then again, twelve day cruises are weird. That’s ship life for you. One cruise always is “a week” (unless it’s one of the really long 42 day ones), and time moves differently. I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned this before. In ship life, we don’t go by days of the week (I would’ve lost track on day 2 if it weren’t for the rugs in the elevators), we go by which port/country we’re in. There is no longer “Monday,” it is now “Athens day.” Despite each cruise being “a week,” it feels like a month, three days feels like a weeks time, and a month seems more like 4, one contract could be 4 months, but feels like a year. It’s so easy to lose track of time when you’re at sea. Weekends don’t exist anymore, they’re days working like any other. Holidays are never really holidays, but there are celebrations despite the work day, and we celebrate anything we can think of! With so many nationalities on board, and so many people, there’s almost always some type of independence day, holiday or birthday; if you know people from all departments, there’s a chance something will be going on every night after work.

It’s not all travelling and losing track of time though. Your friends are people you live and work with and see all day, every day for the most part. Relationships are intensified, even if they’re only short-lived. If there’s a problem, everyone knows and it affects every part of your life. There’s no escape. We have to be ‘on’ any time we’re in public areas, so no matter how bad a day you’re having, or how sick/homesick you feel, you have to smile nice, answer lots of crazy questions politely, and make small talk whenever possible. Entertainment department isn’t the hardest working on the ship, but we are the most visual, everyone sees us and knows who we are (the orange shirts of the ‘on location’ team add to that). If we mess up, everyone knows.

Anyway, today was one of the days I need sometimes to forget the stress of this job, and remember exactly how blessed I am to have it. I had a quiet breakfast early and then got ready to head out to Istanbul with Ryan, Leah, and Mollie. We didn’t want to spend the money on a taxi, so we opted to walk to the spice market and Grand Bazaar. It wasn’t too bad of a walk, especially since it wasn’t too hot out; it took about 45 minutes, including stopping time to look at things and take a few (very few) pictures. At the spice market, Ryan got some tea, while Leah and Mollie got Turkish delight, I didn’t buy anything, I wanted to see what was there, and I’ll be back again, unlike Leah. After the spice market, we walked for another 10 minutes to the Grand Bazaar. Not nearly as overwhelming as everyone made it out to be. At the entrances there are lots of jewelry stores full of shiny stuff, which is the most overwhelming part of the bazaar. We walked around and found that most of the stores were the same thing over and over and over, lamps, scarves, carpets, souvenirs. The antique part of the market was cool to look through though, so much interesting stuff.

We got kind of tired of that, so left and slowly made our way back to the ship, stopping at a few stores on the way. I do think I maybe should temporarily dye my hair for next time I’m in Istanbul, being blonde draws far too much attention to me, especially in the Grand Bazaar, the owners of every store tried to talk to me, asking where I’m from, can they help me buy something, calling me angel, stuff of that sort. Funny story though, on the way back, Ryan and I were walking together and talking, with Leah and Mollie in front of us. Someone was on the sidewalk with his shoe cleaning stuff, he picked it up before we got to him and started to leave. He dropped a brush and didn’t realize it so kept walking. Ryan picked it up and caught up to him to give it to him. The man then put his stool down and sat down with his stuff and told Ryan to put his foot on the other stool. He proceeded to talk to us and clean Ryans sneakers. The other girls walked on and left us. We thought he was just doing it to be nice since Ryan picked up his brush, but when he was finished (and Ryans shoes sufficiently wet), he asked for 8 euros. Ryan didn’t have much money, just some Turkish Lira coins so he gave him that. He was upset, but how were we supposed to know he wasn’t doing it just to be nice?

Back on the ship (it was almost 2 by then), I changed and went up to lunch with Leah and Ryan, luckily the pasta and sandwich lines were still open (they close at 2, we timed it well). After lunch, I decided to take a nap since I still haven’t been sleeping too well. Dinnertime came all too soon. I just had some fruit again since lunch was so late.

Tonight was “Games Galore.” So once free time was over, we set them up to make their own board games, it took them the whole time to finish. The games look really cool actually, I’m quite impressed with them! While they worked on their games, Leah and I worked on a puzzle we’d started the other day, and we finished it right in time for everyone to leave.

I’d agreed to meet Emily at the show, so changed into formal very quickly and got to the show only 20 minutes late. After that I hung out in the hall talking to Emily and Julie (who Emily is training as librarian) for a while, then went to the OB to go out on the bow to watch for shooting stars. It was a very nice night for it, very little wind, not too cold, but cool enough to make it a good idea that I wore my hoodie. There wasn’t anyone there when I got there, so I laid out on one of the picnic tables with the hood of my hoodie folded up as a pillow. People came and went, sometimes star gazing with me, and chatting a bit, sometimes just talking with the group they came with. I saw quite a lot of meteors! There was a really big one that streaked across the sky, burning yellow and leaving a long trail. That was definitely a cool one! The photo department and Meghna joined me at the table (I moved so they could sit at half the table) and some of us watched for shooting stars, while the others just talked. It was a great night, I was the first to leave because I have to work morning sea day hours since we don’t arrive until 11.