East (almost) meets West
We arrived in Istanbul to a beautiful sunny spring day and tulips everywhere. The drive from the airport is lined with these flowers in every color imaginable. It was a nice introduction to the city and we’re starting to settle in here. We’ve got our Abkil (a weird little smart key device that you can prepay for all the buses and trains), and have been getting around pretty easily on the metro.
We’ve walked through the Blue Mosque, the Hippodrome and the Taksim area, but the real highlight for me was the Ayasofya (Hagia Sophia). The soaring dome inside is amazing, but even more so when you realize that it’s about 1500 years old and has survived earthquakes, wars, and religious conversions. It was the largest Christian church in the world at one point, but was then transformed into a Mosque, and finally a museum. Supposedly the Statue of Liberty could fit inside with room to spare. It’s certainly amazing and makes me wonder how they built it when the rest of Europe was in the dark ages.
We also took a ferry up the Bosphorus, the divider between two continents. Istanbul straddles this waterway and is the only city that is in both Europe and Asia. We had a great idea that we’d have breakfast in Europe, lunch in Asia, and then dinner back in Europe again. The fog didn’t cooperate however and the ferry had to turn around about 3/4 of the way up the channel. “Very Dangerous” was the reason, and we weren’t going to argue. We settled for all three meals on the west side of town. The east will have to wait.
halftime
April 22nd, 2009 at 4:08 pm
Welcome to Europe!
April 25th, 2009 at 9:09 am
Have a drink at the Circagan Palace on the Bosphorus.