Sunday Market & How Women Dress Here

You may remember my absolute delight in the veggie market in our old overseas home.

Well, every Sunday here, just one street up from our home (I say up because it's literally "up" a hill... this ain't San Francisco, but it's not far from it, in terms of hilliness), they block off an entire street and have a WONDERFUL fruit & vegetable market. It stretches on and on and on- I LOVE it! We've started implementing a "Sunday salad" routine while good lettuce is, literally, ripe for the picking.

This week, I bought huge beautiful heads of Romaine lettuce, a bagful of wonderfully ripe tomatoes, a bunch of bananas, 3 heads of broccoli (which we promptly steamed and ate yesterday for lunch), green onions, 3 lemons, and a crate of 30 eggs. (Yes, some vendors sell things besides produce: things like eggs, homemade cheeses, yarn and thread, undergarments, tablecloths, fish, and pots & pans, but the overwhelming majority of vendors sell delicious, delectable produce!)


I took this picture to show the overall "feel" of the market, but also to highlight the various levels of dress and modesty you'd find among women here in Istanbul. Some women cover up completely, like the woman on the right, or even wear burqas. Other women feel free to dress just like anything you'd find in America in the summertime, like the woman on the left with her daughter. It's an interesting mix of culture and religion, old world ideas and modern "progress" here. In the villages and out of the more metropolitan areas, I'm sure women would lean heavily towards staying fully covered, but Istanbul is a mix of both Asia & Europe and it shows in the dress of the people.