Turkey - Day Four

Updates on drama

• Professor still doesn't have her luggage. It's back in the States from Brazil, but stuck at JFK. Delta says it's Turkish Airlines' responsibility. Turkish Airlines says it's Delta's responsibility. She order some suits online and they should arrive tomorrow. All the client gifts are in the luggage, along with her audio recording equipment she needs for the research she is doing in London after this project. At least we make her laugh.
  
• The invalids are feeling better. We went on our first client visit today and I was able to eat food. Lots of food.
• Presentation is coming along. Looking forward to Friday afternoon.
  

Today was a cool day. We visited Mavi Jeans, which for those of you who are not fashionistas, is a pretty high end brand. It's the leading brand in Turkey, does really well globally, and has one retail store in the Union Square area of NYC.

Wall o' jeans.

Next we went to a carpet store, which was kind of random, but it was cool to hear about that side of the textile industry, when we've been focusing on just textiles and apparel for the past 8 weeks. He taught us the difference between high and low quality wool and silk rugs. We saw some that were as much as 35,000 (I'm not sure if that was lira or USD, but it's still A LOT!). They were beautiful. We sang "A Whole New World."

On a magic carpet ride.

We finished at the carpet store a little earlier than expected, so we went to the Grand Bazaar to fill time before dinner. Wow. What a zoo. Huge. And talk about history. It was built over 500 years ago when the Ottoman Turks overtook Constantinople and it became Istanbul (cue They Might Be Giants). I didn't buy anything there, though, because we are going to Bursa on Sunday, and our professor tells us the market there will be cheaper and we will need to bargain less.

Just one of many entrances.

We closed out the night with an AMAZING dinner and alumni mixer at the Hotel Sultanhan. We ate on the terrace level, which had floor to ceiling windows, and were able to go on the roof top to see some ridiculous views of the city. Couldn't stop taking pictures. Here's one of them.

That's me, just Bri, in Turkey.

And it turns out I don't like Turkish coffee. That was kind of a disappointment. I'm not going to give up on it yet. I didn't have it with sugar. I will try again with sugar.