Istanbul Shopping Tips by hekate

Gulluoglu: Baklava

Baklava is a typical Turkish pastry. If you want to taste the flavour of the local sweets you should not leave Turkey without tasting bahlava and Turkish delight.

Gulluoglu shops were recommanded to me from a friend of mine who lives in Istanbul as one of the best producers of baklava.

Gulluoglu
Gulluoglu was founded way back in 1871 in Gaziantep for producing Turkish sweets.

In 1949 Mustafa Gullu has begun with the production also in Istanbul since four generation Gulluoglu produce fines Turkish Specialty sweets in best quality and feel proud of presenting them their customers in five shops in Istanbul.

What is Baklava:
Baklava is a dessert made with dough, nuts, butter, and sugar. After baking to perfection, a sweet syrup is immediately poured over the pieces allowing the syrup to be absorbed into the layers.

What to buy: Well, baklava of course :)

What to pay: I guess it would not be more than EUR 10 for a 500 g box.

Theme: Food and Drink

Orient Shop: Miniatures :)

Orient Shop is a small but couzy shop located in the Old book market. When you get inside you will see shelfs full of old-style hand written books, maps, miniatures and engravings.

A service they offer is to have your name written in Arabic letters by a calligrapher.

You will see also water-colour and oil paintings.

What to buy: Well, what I got there as a present was a very nice miniature of a whrilling dervish. It was a bout letter format size.

What to pay: I was tod that if were to pay it would prbably cost me about EUR 20 for that size. In compariso if you try to buy the same format in the museum shops it would be at least EUR 35.

Address: Beyazit / 13, Sahaflar Carsisi (Old Book Market)

Other Contact: mehmettozalp2001@yahoo.om

Phone: +90 (212) 520 68 01

Theme: Books

ER & NE & MET: Carpets carpets Review

I should say that I had visited the ER & NE & MET carpet shop dring my previous visit to Istanbul back in April 2002.

So, the info I am giving could be a bit outdated. However, the fact that they still have their web-site gives me hopes that what I have to say about this place might still be valid :)

Probably you are wondering how did I get there on first place. Well, me and a friend of mine - American boy were walking around Sultanahmet area and we wanted to see the Blue Mosque.

When we were about to enter the yard a young boy approached us and offered us something like a guided tur for free. The only thing we had to do is to go to his shop afterwards, no obligation to buy - just to look around :)))

We went to the shop with the intention only to look around but after drinking a couple of glasses of apple tea and stearing at endless number of carpets and rugs my friend finally bought one.

I should say the service was really good and they were treating us extreemly nice even though we made it clear we can not afford to spend too much. The guy who showed us around the Blue Mosque even took us out for dinner :)

What to buy: ER & NE & MET are specialised in seling rugs, carpets and kilims, both old and new.

There is an impressive variety of carpets from different regions but I think mostly from Anatolia. As far as remeber it was a family run business and their origin was from Anatolia although I am not quite sure because it was a long time ago.

Note:
I do not have a picture from the shop, so I borrowed one from their site. It really looked like that :)

What to pay: Well, I think the price is highly negotiable and it depend on the quality and the size.

The god new is that they offer free delivery with international courriers all over the world in a week or 10 days.

What actually convinced my friend to buy the rug was the fact that he could pay with is credit card. The accept all well-known credit cards.

Address: Sultanahmet / 1, Kucuk Ayasofya Cad.

Directions: Close to the Blue Mosque

Other Contact: info@ernemet.com

Phone: +90 (212) 516 80 82

Theme: Art

Website: http://www.ernemet.com/index.asp