{"id":804,"date":"2013-04-02T14:48:17","date_gmt":"2013-04-02T18:48:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mayliang.us\/?p=804"},"modified":"2013-04-02T14:48:17","modified_gmt":"2013-04-02T18:48:17","slug":"istanbul-spring-2013","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mayliang.us\/?p=804","title":{"rendered":"Istanbul Spring 2013"},"content":{"rendered":"

We spent spring break in Istanbul. The city was not at all what we had expected. Sitting at the juncture of Europe and Asia, we expected a city that was a mix of the two, but it was much more a city of Europe. You also hear the call to prayer blasted through the loudspeakers perched on every minaret, which lends a fascinating note of the exotic to the city. We loved Istanbul and had a fabulous time there. The city was full of historical sites, and the people were warm and friendly.
\nWe stayed at the Four Seasons at Bosphorus, which has two major advantages over many of the other hotels. First, it\u2019s located right at the edge of the Bosphorus, leading to stunning views of the Bosphorus, the old city, and the bridge leading to the Asia half of Istanbul.<\/p>\n

\"view<\/a>
view of the Bosphorus<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"view<\/a>
view of the bridge to Asia<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The other major advantage is that you can partake of hammam, the Turkish bath, at the hotel. Let\u2019s just say that if you dream of being a sybarite in another life, you will definitely enjoy the hammam. All four of us tried it, and it was one of our favorite parts of the trip. In fact, the kids want to return to Istanbul if for no other reason than to get another hammam.<\/p>\n

(Note: the Shangri-la is scheduled to open in Istanbul in the next month or two. While we had an amazing stay at the Four Seasons, we highly recommend the Shangri-la hotel chain as generally having even better service than the Four Seasons. The new hotel will also be located on the Bosphorus and, while we can\u2019t know this for certain yet, I am fairly sure that it, too, will offer hammam.)<\/p>\n

We visited all of the normal historical tourist sites, including the Blue Mosque,<\/p>\n

\"Blue<\/a>
Blue Mosque<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"dome<\/a>
dome of the Blue Mosque<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Topkapi Palace,<\/p>\n

\"Topkapi<\/a>
Topkapi Palace<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"room<\/a>
room in Topkapi Palace<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Dolmabah\u00e7e Palace, Hagia Sophia,<\/p>\n

\"Hagia<\/a>
Hagia Sophia<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Hagia<\/a>
Hagia Sophia<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

the Cistern,<\/p>\n

\"the<\/a>
the Cistern<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

the Summer Palace, the old Muslim Quarter,<\/p>\n

\"old<\/a>
old Muslim quarter<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

the Chora Museum,<\/p>\n

\"DSC_2144\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"DSC_2149\"<\/a><\/p>\n

the old city wall,<\/p>\n

\"old<\/a>
old city wall (time of Theodosius II)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

and the Archeological Museum.<\/p>\n

We also visited the Spice Market (way too much fun sampling and buying olives, chilis, coffee, tea, and other spices) and the Grand Bazaar (a haggling shopper\u2019s paradise for anything your heart desires). We certainly did our part to support the Turkish economy. We also did our part to supporting Turkish culture by consuming large amounts of baklava. Turkish baklava is not a sweet as Greek baklava, but it is sinfully delicious.<\/p>\n

We definitely are planning on a return trip to visit Ephesus and Cappadocia. First, however, we have to get a handle on the language. Let\u2019s just say that Turkish bears no resemblance to any European or Asian language that I\u2019ve seen. And there is no relation to the sound a letter makes in English and the sound the same letter makes in Turkish. In addition, the letters \u201cs\u201d and \u201cc\u201d with cedillas make entirely different sounds than those letters without cedillas as do the letters \u201co\u201d and \u201cu\u201d if there are umlauts on them. It\u2019s enough to make you tear your hair out.\u00a0 But well worth a return trip.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We spent spring break in Istanbul. The city was not at all what we had expected. Sitting at the juncture of Europe and Asia, we expected a city that was a mix of the two, but it was much more a city of Europe. You also hear the call to prayer blasted through the loudspeakers […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3],"tags":[327,78],"class_list":["post-804","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-family","tag-family","tag-istanbul"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p23QXm-cY","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mayliang.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/804","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mayliang.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mayliang.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mayliang.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mayliang.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=804"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mayliang.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/804\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":822,"href":"https:\/\/mayliang.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/804\/revisions\/822"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mayliang.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=804"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mayliang.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=804"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mayliang.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=804"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}