Hello friends,
Today I will start a new thread of posts on Istanbul in Turkey. I visited Istanbul back in February 2009. It was cold and rainy, but I always wanted to go and see Hagia Sophia, the former Byzantine basilica and current museum (Ayasofya Müzesi).
Funny enough, Hagia Sophia features in the film Inferno (2016) that I saw recently, based on the bestselling novel by Dan Brown. The film also features Venice, which I have also visited and written about.
I arrived at Istanbul late at night, so I checked in at my hotel, and asked about guided tours available. They told me that I could actually hire a guide and a driver for a day at a very reasonable cost, which I did.
The next morning the guide came to pick me up from the hotel. Istanbul is a transcontinental city, straddling the European Continent and the Asian Continent. So the guide took me to a nice café at the Asian side of the city quite high up on a hill, to enjoy the panoramic view of the city, and the bridge crossing the Bosphorus strait.
There was a fire burning in the fireplace which made it feel very cosy. I reckon most people there at the time were locals, as you normally wouldn't get many tourists like me at this time of the year.
After that, we went to the Beylerbeyi Palace, a beautiful palace at the Asian side of Bosphorus. I will show you the pictures I took from that place on the next post, as they are too many.
Then he dropped me off at the center of the city, so I roamed a bit, had lunch, and then decided to go on a boat cruise along the Bosphorus. Some of the boats there were actually rather colorful.
I just wish I had done this cruise in the summer, because it's a very picturesque one. Unfortunately winter dulls everything out.
And that's the end of this post. I hope you liked it, and that you will follow me in my next one about the luscious Beylerbeyi Palace. Have a good day and speak to you soon!
Thanks for this journey!
Thank you for posting @koskl. Just amazing....fabulous photographs. Thank you for bringing Istanbul to your Steemit readers.
@holgermarkgraf, @bleujay: thank you a lot!
as i said, i just wish the sun was out, because that would give great pics.
good pictures but could be much better.