Sunday 19 June 2011

Historic Istanbul Part 1

Yesterday afternoon I arrived home after spending 10 days soaking up the sun and historic sights of Turkey. It was a fabulous holiday. :)

The first 4 days we spent in Istanbul and the rest of the time we stayed in the small seaside town of Kalkan. Kalkan was lovely - warm, very pretty and the people were so friendly, but it is hilarious - in this small seaside town every other person is English!!!! Its crazy, so many people from England have either moved out there or spend every holiday there, up to the point that there are probably more English than Turkish people who have houses in the town!! Anyway, getting slightly off topic. This post is meant to be about the historic sights of Istanbul.

I had never been to Turkey before and didn't know much about Istanbul, except that the Ottomans used to rule it, it used to be called Constantinople, and it wasn't where turkeys came from !! lol :) So I wasn't sure what sights I wanted to see. So I consulted good old Dorling Kindersley and then preceed to drag my parents back and forth across the city to every historic site that I liked the sound and look of. :)

Here are a few of them:

Topkapi Palace


Home to the Sultan's of the Ottoman Empire until the early 19th Century. It is a series of buildings on a large estate in the centre of the historic quarter of the city.

Here are a few photos of the main palace which housed the women of the Harem and the Sultan.

























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