Shopping Mall

We arrived at the airport early because traffic was lighter than expected.  Our guide decided it would be fun to stop at a local mall for about an hour.  He highly recommended the ice cream and his advice was good.  David and I both got a double scoop.  We tried chocolate, cream, and caramel.  One of the vendors spoke excellent English, asked where we were from and where we were headed.  He had a specialty dish that he recommended we try when we get to Manisa.  (I can't remember the name of it now, but that's ok).  His spontaneous conversation made us feel really welcome.  We also found a super super grocery mart (Kipa) in this complex.  It was bigger than Sam's club and had every item you could imagine.  I quickly located the chocolate aisle to see if I could locate some Turkish chocolate - more on that later.

BiggMall is actually a name of a huge department store, not the mall itself.  The mall complex was huge and filled with every different type of shop imaginable, including many known western retail outlets.  It was shiny and clean and filled with shoppers.  (We were there on a Sunday afternoon)

This is inside one of the entrances to the department store.  Most of the shop entrances were on the exterior with tent-like tarps offering shade between the walkways.  We stepped in to get some $ from the ATM and found a wall of 10 different machines all from different banks.  We randomly picked one since it didn't matter when one charged us a fee.  Successful transaction = smile.

David and I found a good place to just sit and people watch on a stairway between levels.  You can see an amusement park in the distance with a lot of fun rides and putt-putt golf.

One of the things we noticed is that many of the women have this unusual dress combination of a headscarf and what looks like a  light weight raincoat (no sign of rain, it was sunny and almost 80).  I took pictures of several of the women who passed by in this outfit.  Our friend from Turkey who is on the trip with us says these are called 'camisoles' and are quite popular.  I said they looked kind of hot for the weather and she said, oh no, they are very light weight.  They still looked hot to me : )