Our last tour outing was a cruise on the Bosporus, which
gave us an entirely new perspective on Istanbul’s unique position, on two
waterways and two continents. Tom and I
would take the ferry across to the Asia side of Istanbul the following week, so
this was an excellent introduction to the other faces of Istanbul.
The iconic views of the mosque of Suleiman
the Magnificent (stay tuned to later posts when we visited it up close and personal).
Ditto iconic view of the Topkapi Palace from the water, with the minarets of Hagia Sofia and the Blue Mosque beyond.
Dolmabace Palace is almost a quarter mile long. It replaced the Topkapi Palace when the sultans discovered the opulence of western Europe. We will visit it in a later post, too.
One was meant to arrive by water, naturally.
Mosque-in-a-box.
The Byzantines protected the entrance into the Golden Horn by boat with a huge chain. The Ottomans built this fortress on the other side of the Horn in less than a year (thank heavens for slave labor?), then dragged their boats across land to the upper end of the Horn (ditto!), avoiding the chain, and attacking the Byzantines by land and sea. It was recently renovated and open for visitors. Next trip!
Real estate on the Asia side of Istanbul is
in high demand by the ultra wealthy. The
red house recently sold for $100 million. It’s a tear-down, of course.
Another $100m house-in-a-box.
A high school whose claim to fame is that Ataturk went there.
A closer look at Topkapi Palace on our return voyage.
Our cruise draws to a close, as well as our Road Scholar tour.
That evening we enjoyed a lovely meal together before our goodbyes.
A tiny postscript.
Our Istanbul hotel has a small fountain in the lobby with turtles from Mississippi (of all places), and each day as we left and arrived, we would drift over to see how they were doing.
We joked that they were attempting to put on a show, but never quite got there.
The morning of the tour departure, most of the folks left in the wee early morning hours, while we stayed on until check-out time to move to another hotel for another wonderful week in Istanbul. As we were leaving, we noticed that the turtles had finally got their act together. We share it with you here.
Ta da!
A tiny postscript.
Our Istanbul hotel has a small fountain in the lobby with turtles from Mississippi (of all places), and each day as we left and arrived, we would drift over to see how they were doing.
1 comment:
Susan, Thank you for posting your photos. They are great! I love thm all and will spend hours looking, admiring, and wondering how you ever managed to get them all on the computer for emailing.
Post a Comment