I imagine it is quite fun meeting many of the carpet vendors from Istanbul in Texas and perhaps showing them a different side to the United States 🙂 And yes, Istanbul is charming!

Hi William,
Would be interested to hear your thoughts if you do return to Istanbul. Although a lot has changed and become “modernized,” there’s still the traditional and cultural feel to the place that will never change (I hope). We did visit Kadikoy very briefly on our last time through Istanbul and thought it was not only beautiful, but people were incredibly friendly. Next time we’ll spend more time there…

Brad, agree completely with what a fascinating city Istanbul is with its mixture of east and west and tradition and modernity. After that one experience in Istanbul getting called out for not being Canadian, we have avoided it ever since. As for redirecting political discussions about the United States, you might enjoy this article about an experience we had in Istanbul: https://uncorneredmarket.com/power-redirected-negative-energy/

I never returned to the blog to report on my time in Istanbul. Certainly, *lots* of carpet sellers. They didn’t bother me so much as the touts for tours and the like that would walk up to you while you were admiring a building or the like and start their spiel trying to sell you a tour. I finally started saying that I was Swedish and didn’t speak good English. Mostly that worked until some guy came out with two words of Swedish. But I shut him down with a solid minute (in my fluent Swedish) of discussion about how nice it was to meet someone who could speak the language, and how difficult it was in Turkey, etc.. He literally just turned and walked away.

I did always present myself as Canadian, from Ottawa, and occasionally had the experience of someone knowing Ottawa. But since I *am* Canadian from Ottawa I could provide as much or more detail as anyone could want. More, in fact. 🙂