Went we arrived in Istanbul, we didn’t know how long that we were going to be there. It was the weekend and the plan was a semi-house hunting trip and dinner with work colleagues Saturday, some touring on Sunday, and the girls would fly back Monday while I stayed for work for another week. Moving to Istanbul or Izmir was a potential option after my London assignment ended, so I wanted Sharon to see potential places to live. But it was decided to skip the day and we stayed at the hotel most of the day.
We had a hotel in Taksim Square – which normally would have been a great location but that was the location of the car bombing from the week before and we were still very cautious. When we did decide to leave, instead of taking public transportation, we got a driver and were very deliberate on where we visited. The start of each day was finding out more information from the USA (much better internet at hotel) and trying to figure out when the girls would fly back.
Istanbul is truly one of the great places in the world to visit – it is the cross-roads of world with the city straddling Europe and Asia. Now Turkey is secular with most of the people practicing Islam (Sunni) and very welcoming (this was my circa 2000-2002 view – it seems to have changed) but the city had been known as Constantinople since the Roman Empire moved there in ~ 300 A.D. We focused on our visits to 3 sites, Sultanahmet Park (Hagia Sophia & the Blue Mosque), Tokapi Palace, and a boat trip on the Bosphrus.
Hagia Sophia dates to the dates of the Roman Empire and was a Christian Church for 1,000 years then covered to a Mosque in the 1300’s.
The Blue Mosque was completed in 1600 which the objective of being more impressive than the Hagia Sophia – both are very impressive. But considering that the Blue Mosque was built 400 years ago while Hagia Sophia was built 1,300 years before the Blue Mosque, I’d have to vote Hagia Sophia.
Our trip to Tokapi Palace was most memorable for misplacing Alexandra for awhile – we found her as she had latched on to an English-speaking couple and had gone to security. I am guessing the picture below is before the drama.
I don’t remember the specifics, but eventually we were notified of flights resuming and Sharon and the girls left on the second flight back to London – still paranoid so they weren’t on the first one.
I made 6 trips to Turkey and spent about 6 weeks in country over three years and really enjoyed my visits and the people as well as the large projects that we were building there with our partner. We ended up never seriously considering relocating to Istanbul as after 9/11 it seemed best to head back to the USA. From a work perspective, our work outside the USA fell off dramatically for a couple of years
(This was written during the Great Shutdown of 2020. My memory isn’t this good, used internet searches to fill in a lot of holes. If there’s huge fat foot below me, it