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On our last day in Turkey we met up with Ali, Deniz and their cousin Altug.

We spent the morning on a Bosphorus boat tour but once back to Eminönü we decided to find a place to enjoy a liquid lunch. Under the bridge might not be everyone’s idea of an ideal place to find a drink, but the lower level of the Galata bridge (connecting the two European shores of the Golden Horn) is packed with fine restaurants – or at least restaurants – and some decent views of the city and all the boat and ferry traffic.

We initially walked the side with the best views and tried to get one of the establishments to give us a deal on the beer. 500mL of beer outside of Istanbul can be as low as 3 lira but Istanbul prices are closer to 6. Our goal was to find somewhere that would give it to us for 5 lira or less.

We talked to one barker – the guy trying to get you to sit down – on the good view side, but he said he couldn’t even lower the price to 5.90 per beer. Deniz heard that there was a place that would sell you the beer for 3 and once on the other side we almost sat down at a place that claimed 3 for beer but that was for a half-glass and not the full 500mL. After half of us had walked away with the barker protesting, he said he’d give us a deal and when forced to tell us the price before we sat down gave us the beer for 4 – better than I had hoped!!!

At the end of our 8 beers, we were somewhat surprised to see that the bill came to 44 lira instead of 32 as it should have. Turns out they wanted to charge us for the 3 bowls of nuts we had shared! We hadn’t ordered the nuts, we hadn’t even seen a menu – but they claimed that we had asked for them. I guess they interpreted “asking” as “we will now place this bowl of nuts in front of you and if you don’t immediately tell us to remove it, then you’ve asked for it. We will keep refilling the bowl thereafter with no need to talk to you.”

So we asked to see the menu! Apparently the nuts cost 4 lira per bowl for a total of 12 lira. Outraged, we argued with the server and the original barker. Deniz threatened to leave without paying for the nuts and the barker told us that he makes 20 lira per day and that if we left without paying for the nuts that portion of the bill would come out of his salary. We asked to speak to the big boss and shortly after the boss came out and talked with us.

Although I couldn’t understand the conversation that ensued in Turkish, it was explained that we – including the Instanbul resident – thought that the nuts were free. We had made enough of a racket that eventually the big boss relented and took them off our bill.

If I had been on my own I think I would likely have ended up paying for the nuts as a Turkish prison doesn’t interest me and as my Turkish consists of only a few words I think my debating skills wouldn’t have got me anywhere. It was the only bad experience we had anywhere in Turkey, and it happened just as we were about to leave, so it left a bit of a bad taste in my mouth.