It would have been so easy to begin this post with lots of clichés about Istanbul as it is A Curious Mix of East and West, The Crossroad of Religion and Culture and A Tale of Two Continents. I decided not to do this as you can read a guidebook for that. Furthermore, which city are we talking about? It has had so many names over the years that one could become confused- Byzantium, New Rome, Constantinople, Stamboul and Istanbul to name but a few.
Although Istanbul is not the capital of Turkey, it is certainly the largest city with around 13 Million people. Divided by a strip of water between the Black sea and the Marmara Sea, half of the city lies in Europe (the part which used to be Constantinople) and the other side in Asia.
On the 1st June 1889, the Orient Express first left Paris for Constantinople. These days it only makes this Journey once a year. I think when I am rich I will do this because it would be brilliant. From the Asian train station it is possible to get trains to popular holiday destinations such as Baghdad and Tehran. Maybe one day I will do that too.
This time though I arrived by plane in the wee hours of the morning which meant that I had to hang around on the Asian side of the city waiting for the first ferry to Europe with nothing to do except take photos.
No trip here would be complete without a trip to the
Hagia Sophia, probably the city's most famous landmark. It was built as a Byzantine church, to out-do the temple of
Soloman. When the city was captured by the Ottomans it was redecorated and transformed into a mosque. In the 1930s it was then turned into a museum, which I think just means they're allowed to charge an entry fee.
Sorry to use another
cliché, but this is a city with layers of history. Literally layers which you can see in here where parts of the newer decorations are coming off, revealing Christian mosaics.
It was quite difficult to photograph as it was so large but also very dark inside so most of my photos are blurry.
The round Arabic medallions are not part of the original decorations they were very impressive.
I'm sure this is symbolic in some way- something about religion's ability to restrict?
Tourist attraction number 2 is the
Sultanahmet Mosque, a.k.a. the Blue Mosque.
It was designed by the famous architect
Sinan and got its nickname from the blue tiles inside.
Just outside was a fountain which was a present from the Kaiser of Germany (Wilhelm II) to the Sultan. It had some lovely mosaics- I'm sure a magpie would steal it all for its collection.
This is the Ottoman seal and it comes up all over the city. Rather like an Aladdin style lamp don't you think?
This is the courtyard outside the mosque at night.
Whilst I'm on the topic of
Sinan's mosques, here is the
Süleymaniye Mosque, a little bit older but freshly restored.
Tourist Attraction number 3 (we didn't visit all these in this order) is the underground cistern built by the Romans to supply the city with water for their Turkish baths, which at that time were still known as Roman baths for obvious reasons. The cistern was forgotten about until someone noticed people were able to get water by lowering a bucket through a hole in their cellar and sometimes the occasional fish apparently.
It is famous for two Medusa's heads which hold some columns. Apparently they were looted from some other temple, just like everything else everywhere pretty much. They were put there to scare away the real Medusa.
Here's the seal again.
Another must see on a visit to Istanbul is the Sultan's palace. Dad didn't really want to go in, but I made him as I really wanted to see the harem. I may have been ignorant, but I never realised before that the Harem was for the Sultans here, I thought it was somewhere else but I'm not sure where actually. He didn't regret coming in as it was stunningly beautiful. I have many photos of beautiful tiles and all the decorations but I'm sure you want a condensed version. I think this might have been a general room for the concubines to entertain the Sultan in.
I'm glad they were practical about storage space in there.
This was another room. Many of the rooms were decorated lavishly so this is just one example.
These domes are just in part of the palace grounds.
There are many mosques in Istanbul, many of them designed in the Byzantine style (with big domes like on the photo) after the
Hagia Sophia.
Pretty much everywhere in the city there were lots of very nice tiles on show which would look very nice decorations at home. It's a good job that you can try and haggle for them in the Bazaar.
One of the reasons I have always wanted to go there is the old style ferries which are a reminder of the city's former glory (not Roman times obviously, but like 19th/20th century probably)
In a city with so much history, one has to pay a visit to the Archaeological Museum. One of the best things about this was the cafe. It was in a garden amongst many statues of
Medusa, other people and animals. A perfect spot for a
Türk Kahvesi (Turkish coffee.)
Although this did lead to some silliness which I can't demonstrate as I will get into trouble, but if you want to see it, I have the photo.
Another great cafe was on the other side of the Bosphorus, looking out over the Maiden's Tower, where James Bond averted a nuclear holocaust, towards the mosques on the European side.
Whilst on the theme of cafes, we went to on where they served the tea in elegant samovars. You pour the tea from the top one, but it is quite strong so then you dilute it as you like it with water from the bottom one.
This cafe also had a beautiful view over to Asia and you could see all the ferries going by.
"What a beautiful view!!!"
Speaking of samovars, I bought one. I haggled for it which was great fun and I got a little coffee pot into the bargain. There is a bazaar district which includes the Grand Bazaar, the worlds oldest shopping centre and the Spice Bazaar. At the Grand Bazaar I bought some nice things and of course haggled, nothing has a fixed price. I was probably paying way over the real cost but I think I got them down quite far.
The spice bazaar is for foody things, like lovely snacks...
We had this chocolate Baklava somewhere else but it is generally the sort of thing they had there.
They also have lots of Turkish delight and similar things. I bought some and it was very nice and not too expensive.
Of course the main thing you should buy in there is spices, there was plenty to go around.
Wow I've got to the end of the post.
It's kind of like Europe with an exotic twist, but kind of not like Europe at all, and probably not so similar to other Asian cities. I think the best overused phrase to describe it is One of a Kind.
This was one of my last photos, taken on my last ferry ride back to the Asian side to my airport (the "ryanair" airport of Istanbul.) One of the silliest airports ever, I was not allowed to go in. After about 20 minutes of asking the staff where I could get in for my international departure, I eventually worked out that the only place I could go in was through the "Domestic Arrivals Exit." Time for a last cup of Turkish tea (and about 6 hours) before I flew back to Germany.
Also it made a change to not be sat in the beergarden watching the people in the little boats go by. Having said that, no one in this photo is paying us any attention. How rude.
Everyone on the river just likes to relax.
Then we grilled on the island in the middle of the river- lovely. Unfortunately it got a bit stormy after that and I went home. I was quite please when I saw this from my window though.
It turns out everyone's (second/third) favourite catholic is visiting Germany, it's such a shame I won't be there.
This is the bridge. It is a very famous bridge, and I know that it was built as a replacement for all the other wooden ones which got swept away by very high water.
They've also dammed the river up a bit so it will probably never get that high again. Then we went inside the schloß, which was very pretty but a bit disapplointing. There was no information inside, so we didn't learn anything. I'm not someone to stand and read everything but, a little bit of information about what this room used to be and how so and so used to do this and that here and there. It is quite a rotten castle, only ruins and a big tower which is half collapsed. 
Luckily there was some information about this (literally the only information there was I think...) and it was never completely full and leaked a lot of wine so they decided just to use it as decoration.
We were mistaken though. It turned out we had picked the perfect day to visit Bebenhausen. A door into the inner cloister was open (you normally need to pay) so we went in and found lots of people wearing fancy clothes and drinking sekt. Just as we were about to turn around and go, someone said to us, "Oh its an German American Institute event, but you're not disturbing anyone... You could even have a glass of wine and no one would know." How nice. We did this.
We also took her words to mean "you can help yourselves to the buffet as much as you like." I think we both had 4 sandwiches each, but I was very disappointed that there was no dessert- let alone multiple desserts in one bowl. We knew that we were not alone in our deceit as there was a family who live in my halls of east Asian decent, also helping themselves. They left at about the same time as us. On our way through the little village, before the long uphill climb back to where I live, we stopped for some fun on the big swing in the playground. The photo is blurry but it was fun.
We couldn't have an intensive sight-seeing programme, because most of the things to do round here involve walking to castles, and the weather forecast was bad the whole time. We did go to the castle in Tuebingen, which is an archaeology museum. Afterwards before we decided to go to the cinema, we went to the "Schloßcafe," a pub near the castle, where you can play games. We played scrabble- it is very difficult to play in a language if it is not your mother tongue. We could only use short words. Our scores are on this photo, but after a while it became too depressing and we started making words and phrases of our own.
For those of you for some reason not fluent in Dutch, this means "Oh how nice." The Dutch say it a lot. Wat leuk.
There was still time for some touristy photo taking and a last icecream. This photo, although not so flattering, shows two of my favourite things- the occasional icecream and sitting on the wall over the river.
Thank you to both of you for visiting me :) I will be seeing you soon!
The river Neckar flows up north and joins up with the Rhein at some point near Heidelberg or Mannheim I think. I'm not sure as we didn't go that far to check it out. We went around the long island in the river and had a picnic.
At one point we ran into a family of ducks, almost literally. We were going along leisurely and the ducklings floated off round the side of our boat, round the back to where the propellers were. We had to stop pedalling immediately to prevent any duck soup incidents.
Afterwards, or certainly at some point we went for ice cream at one of my favourite ice cream-eating-spots- The wall. Known to those who love it as the Neckarmauer, it is on one side of the river, and is brilliant for eating ice cream whilst watching the boats go pass by. This was also when I first tried out lemon and basil ice cream- interesting and very nice.
We also decided to go to Lichtenstein. Not the country of course, that would be silly. It probably wouldn't be that far to go, but knowing Deutsche Bahn, it would cost loads and the train would be late. Contrary to popular UK belief, German trains are not that much better than our own apart from the ice train (Inter City Express. It's a kind of high-speedish train.) I'm digressing. No, we went to Schloss Lichtenstein- a castle built by a (mad) man who was obsessed by the Novel Lichtenstein. It isn't large, but its appearance is striking. For poor students who don't own a car it also means about an hour on foot up hill in the sweltering heat before you reach the top. I think it was worth it though.
As Laura has a nice DSLR camera we had a mini photoshoot.
And after all our hard work we needed a beer in the beergarden.
An interesting door:
And the photoshoot continued.
And lots of silly behaviour.
It was really nice, because we hadn't seen each other for such a long time. I'm looking forward to more fun, although less in the sun as we will be in Newcastle, but it will be good all the same.
It is famous for two Medusa's heads which hold some columns. Apparently they were looted from some other temple, just like everything else everywhere pretty much. They were put there to scare away the real Medusa.
Another must see on a visit to Istanbul is the Sultan's palace. Dad didn't really want to go in, but I made him as I really wanted to see the harem. I may have been ignorant, but I never realised before that the Harem was for the Sultans here, I thought it was somewhere else but I'm not sure where actually. He didn't regret coming in as it was stunningly beautiful. I have many photos of beautiful tiles and all the decorations but I'm sure you want a condensed version. I think this might have been a general room for the concubines to entertain the Sultan in.
I'm glad they were practical about storage space in there.
This was another room. Many of the rooms were decorated lavishly so this is just one example.
These domes are just in part of the palace grounds.
There are many mosques in Istanbul, many of them designed in the Byzantine style (with big domes like on the photo) after the Hagia Sophia.
Whilst on the theme of cafes, we went to on where they served the tea in elegant samovars. You pour the tea from the top one, but it is quite strong so then you dilute it as you like it with water from the bottom one.
This cafe also had a beautiful view over to Asia and you could see all the ferries going by.
Speaking of samovars, I bought one. I haggled for it which was great fun and I got a little coffee pot into the bargain. There is a bazaar district which includes the Grand Bazaar, the worlds oldest shopping centre and the Spice Bazaar. At the Grand Bazaar I bought some nice things and of course haggled, nothing has a fixed price. I was probably paying way over the real cost but I think I got them down quite far.
We had this chocolate Baklava somewhere else but it is generally the sort of thing they had there.
They also have lots of Turkish delight and similar things. I bought some and it was very nice and not too expensive.
Of course the main thing you should buy in there is spices, there was plenty to go around.
Wow I've got to the end of the post. 
