The Penn Stater Magazine

More from Istanbul

May 1, 2011 at 3:16 pm Tina Hay 1 comment

I’m not sure what I was thinking when I promised I’d try to blog regularly from our Legendary Turkey trip. It’s hard enough keeping up with the pace of the trip itself!

We were out the door this morning around 7:30; toured two mosques, a museum, and a palace; had lunch at a restaurant serving Ottoman-era food; didn’t get back to the hotel until about 6 p.m.; and turned around and went back out at 7 p.m. to explore Taksim Square and the pedestrian/shopping street called Istiklal Caddesi. (Caddesi is the Turkish word for street or boulevard.)

It’s now past 10 p.m. here, and we have to pack our bags—this is our last night in Istanbul—and get up at 6 tomorrow morning to hit the road for Gallipoli and Assos.

Here are just a few images from our two-and-a-half days in Istanbul. First, a shot from the famed Grand Bazaar, which features something like 4,000 vendor stalls offering everything from tiles to carpets to jewelry:

And here’s one from the nearby Egyptian Spice Market, which is similar to the Grand Bazaar but much smaller and focusing more on food.

Today’s agenda included visits to the Big Three of sightseeing in Istanbul:

the Blue Mosque (shown at the top of this page), Hagia Sophia, and the Topkapi Palace. Here are some people photographing one of the Byzantine-era mosaics at Hagia Sophia:

And here is a photo of the ceiling one of the many exquisitely decorated buildings at the Topkapi Palace (click it for a bigger version showing just how ornate this is):

Istanbul is just such a visual treat; we’re all enjoying it immensely and sorry to think it’s time to move on already.

Tomorrow night we’ll be staying at a hotel in Assos that I’m told is charming and has a terrific view overlooking the Aegean Sea, but I have a feeling it doesn’t have Internet access. So I might not be in touch again until we hit Izmir on Tuesday. In the meantime I’m accumulating lots of photos of our adventures, so check back later for more.

Tina Hay, editor

Entry filed under: Alumni Association. Tags: Blue Mosque, Egyptian Spice Market, Grand Bazaar, Hagia Sophia, Legendary Turkey, Topkapi Palace.