Turkey

 What does your mind think of when you think of Turkey?  All I knew of it was that it was a vibrant city of 17 million people which has a lot of history.  I'd read about it in some Turkish novels about the beautiful Blue Mosque  and the fact that it was situated very close to the Bosphorous Sea.

Well all this became very real for Ron and I when we visited Turkey in late January and these first photos are of the city of Istanbul on the Bosphorous and the Blue Mosque.  

The inside of the Blue Mosque was covered with blue tiles, hence it's name and  I'd expected to get some good photos of the tiles but they've somehow managed to suspend lights across the entire inside making it difficult to photograph because of all the electrical wiring suspended from the ceiling.  Nevertheless I could see beauty in the fittings themselves and photographed right through them !!!!

Another amazing site we visited was the Hagia Sophia  or Church of Holy Wisdom which is a Byzantine church dedicated in 536. Architects today still marvel at the design which was quite unique and ahead of it's time. During it's history it was converted to a Mosque therefore they added the huge Arabic signs on the walls but fortunately they didn't destroy the Christian paintings and early Christian mosaics.  It's now a Museum.  We spent hours in there soaking up the atmosphere and wandering around the building where people a century ago also trod.

During our stay in Istanbul I (Jan) turned 60!!!!  To celebrate we went to the Pera Palace Hotel in the evening for dinner. It used to be the Hotel that they would put up the people travelling on the original Orient Express and it's just recently been done up.  The story goes that Agatha Christie also spent a lot of time in the Hotel therefore the restaurant is now called the Agatha Restaurant.  The fittings were superb, the decor was spectacular and the food was to die for.  Both Ron and I said afterwards that we'd never had a better fine dining meal  experience before and it was all we could have asked for to help celebrate my birthday in this amazing city. 

We saw the Grand Bazaar markets, the Spice Souk, the Topkapki Palace and Taxsim square.  We rode the trams, trains and took taxis and went for a couple of ferry rides on the Bosphorous right up as far as the Black Sea. The food throughout our stay was fantastic with lots of fresh European type salads, seafood, kebabs, meatballs and yiros type sandwiches.  They even have some half decent wines available which we tried whenever we could.  This picture was taken at a fish restaurant at a little fishing village out near the entrance to the Black Sea. The cat was pleading with me for some food until the waiter went and chased him away. I'm sure he would have come back to try it on the next customers sitting at that table.

We also took a day trip to Gallipoli.  It's around 450kms from Istanbul but we decided as Aussies(1 real one and 1 by default) we had an obligation to visit this famous site. We hired a driver and when we got there we had a guide who showed us around for about 3 hours. They were both terrific and as we travelled down and back we learnt a lot about the Turkish people and their culture through talking to the driver and in Gallipoli we had a young guide who was  passionate about the history of the First World War and he'd really done his research so we learnt such a lot from him as well.   We came away very pleased we'd taken the time to go and confident in the fact that the Turkish people are very much our  friends but quite reflective on the senselessness of war.

This is just little of what we did in the 10 days we were away but I hope it gives you a glimpse of Turkey and I really hope you  may be able to visit there one day, we would  love to return and experience it in the warmer weather and  see more of the country.