Gimme five Turkish delights

AT General Trading Company you'll pay 24 for a Turkish lantern coated muslin pulled over a spiral of wire with a copper-tinted-tin top and base.

With candles inside, they make a magic grotto of your garden party. In lilac, mottled orange, yellow, avocado, blue, white and fiery red. Best barter at the bazaar: 9.50. From Zahit Attci, Yaglikostar Cad 130.

FOR a pom-pom of saffron (above), expect to pay anything up to 50, depending on the American twang in your accent.

For reliable, strong-smelling, Iranian best, haggle it down to 7 for 20 grams at Ali Baba, Kazaslar Sok 27.

EVEN Posh sports a fake.

If you didn 't make the waiting lists for Louis Vuitton 's alma graffiti-logo tote,go black market:best barter 20 (510 for the real thing).Make sure you 're not flying via Paris - fakes are liable to be confiscated,, if not by the authorities,then by green-eyed bag ladies.Available throughout the Bazaar.

DIG deep for a double bed-width raw shot-silk bolster, decorated with Buddhist yellows and antique Ottoman embroidered textiles. No two are the same. Barter down from 20 to 16. From Ismail Karkmag, Zenneciler Cad 25/27; the vendor will also make an interlining for you to stuff with duck feathers (5.95 per kilo from John Lewis).

PAY 35 for 56 grams of Beluga caviar from the Caspian Sea at Istanbul's Atatrk Airport. Or, with ballsy bargaining, pay half that in the market.

Queue with locals (caviar's as common as carpets in the Grand Bazaar), but insist they package it in ice and polystyrene for the flight home.

From Ali Baba, Kazaslar Sok 27.

Copyright 2001
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