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May 12, 2006
Just a taste
Another day in this strange, beautiful city passes. Today we got up later than usual (well I got up late, my sister had to drag me out of bed), and headed to the Topkapi Palace. This is the palace of the Ottoman's, a much more Turkish experience compared to the quasi-european thing we saw the other day.
It was damned busy, bus loads of tourists everywhere. First up was the Harem, which much to my surprise (dissapointment?), wasn't a place of endless orgies, but rather a private place for the Sultan, his 4 wives and up to 300 concubines(!) could exist in privacy. This was a fairly rushed tour so you couldn't really stay too long in there. After that we grabbed some lunch then toured the rest of the palace. As I mentioned, its a much more authentic Turkish Palace, none of the trappings of exclusive French and Italian furnishings here; more like what you'd expect from, well, something Turkish.
As an added bonus I've cropped and reduced three images from my growing collection to show here:
This is the view from our hotel in Istanbul, the Blue Mosque:
Topkapi Palace, Istanbul:
Gap of Dunloe:
Newgrange, north of Dublin:
Posted by rup at May 12, 2006 05:05 AM