Turkey (I.) - Istanbul and travel warnings

I know, I know. First it was Argentina/Chile. Then home, then Macedonia, then Spain. Now Turkey?!

Yes, I also sometimes wonder if I'm enjoying too much and one day karma will give it back to me. But, right now, after four years in Uganda and while I can, I'm determined to make the most out of my free time with no (or very little) bad conscience. And so Turkey it was: conveniently close to Europe but different enough to make it interesting, with decent food and decent weather in May, and relatively easy to reach from South Sudan.

The question was rather where in Turkey. With just two weeks at hand and no desire to make our way between crowds, at the end we decided to explore the south-eastern corner of the country (well yeeeeees, that part next to Syria/Iraq/Iran... but it's not that close - mostly - and, like my friend says, places without a travel warning are boring). And a great choice it was.

With that plan in mind, we only spent in Istanbul the very minimum time: enough to have a flight buffer day at the beginning and another day and half at the end of our stay, and little enough to have a good excuse to return more "properly" some other time. And while there, we were happy just to wander around the centre and see the very most touristy things.

Hagia Sophia

Not aiming to do an Istanbul visitor's review, still I'll allow myself a thrilled rant on Hagia Sophia. Because this immense building is impressive - but it's even more impressive if you think that it was constructed in 6th century (!), in a time when nothing remotely similar was being built - and that nothing similar was attempted to be built for another thousand years! For a whole millennium it remained the largest enclosed space in the world... and it did fill me with awe. I can just imagine those two 6th century architects, eating some merry mushrooms and then drawing the building design while being pretty high :-)

I mean... wow...

Look at the size of the people in the galleries

We happened to arrive to Istanbul just before 1st May - and good that we weren't particularly serious about sightseeing, especially about entering in the monuments, or else we'd have spent a lifetime in queues.

The Blue Mosque... built a thousand years after Hagia Sophia

Instead we got inside all these places, queue-free, when we came back to Istanbul at the end of the trip, in a mid-week day. Do that if you can.

Unlike Hagia Sophia, the Blue Mosque does have pillars inside...

... of rather significant size.

I probably need to do another impressed rant - this time about the Basilica Cistern. An underground cistern, built in 6th century, to hold water. Lot of water (after seeing some water-sanitation projects, yes, 80,000m3 is really, really a lot). And that whole thing looks like a cathedral (again, it's a water cistern). With decorated columns (even if they had been recycled from other buildings, still).

The Basilica Cistern

And the last happy outburst here - this time about my new camera. After years of faithful service I decided to retire my D40, and give myself as a present a successor, a D5500. You know that I'm not even remotely a technology-freak (it's about the photographer, not the camera), but there are some cool things about my new toy. One of them is the ISO sensitivity. The photo above is done with ISO 8000. Forget about that my old camera. Hurray to photos in (much more) darkness.

Some important obelisks... can't remember the name

A word of caution for a bit of counter-balance - the Topkapi Palace is pretty, but when they compare it to Granada's Alhambra, don't believe them.

Topkapi palace.

One consistent thing throughout the places I visit lately seems to be men in the streets sitting around and drinking (tea in this instance).

But I loved the feel of ancient history all around the centre - and didn't venture beyond there.

The Grand Bazaar (App). Is this too much modernity?

Actually, we did venture beyond the centre. On our way to the airport, heading south-east, we crossed the Bosporus over to the Asian side. When you think about it, it's kind of cool to cross between continents on a ferryboat public transport. I loved it anyway.

And from there we flew to Gaziantep, to start our south-east exploration.

Gaziantep is a quite big (and fairly industrial) town with a small historical centre, lying on an old trade route coming from Aleppo, now one of the main aid worker bases for programmes in Syria. The town is famous for its pistachio and baklava - which, alas, we failed to try. Just like we failed to buy some of the local beauty products from the bazaar.

Goat milk or sulphur? Can't really decide which one is better for the skin...

We did manage to take a look in the centre though...

... drink tea, and watch an ice-hockey world championship match with our hosts, a Czech (hence the ice-hockey) couple from the PIN Syria programme and their dog (thank you again!)...

... before finally hitting the road the following morning, out of Gaziantep north towards the Nemrut Dağı.

More on Turkey here.