These photos are in addition to those that have already been posted on Photo.net and Facebook. They are being put here primarily for the benefit of people who don’t like navigating through external pages, as well as for people who reach the site by searching for images from a particular location. As an added bonus, the files linked here are quite a bit bigger than those in either of the two other places, in case anyone wants to try making prints (though you would be better off emailing me for the original files).
During my first crossing of the Bosphorus, I snapped this shot of the fluttering Turkish flag..
In Istanbul, there are cats everywhere.
This park beside the Topkapi Palace was always full of soldiers, and government cars screeched through it regularly. That said, I quite liked the trees.
Elegant arches on the side of the Blue Mosque.
One of the best thing about the grand mosques of Turkey is the incredible sense of space when beneath their main domes.
Istanbul?
…not Constantinople????
Kerrie,
Byzantium is the coolest former name, by far.
Sailing to Byzantium
William Butler Yeats
THAT is no country for old men. The young
In one another’s arms, birds in the trees
– Those dying generations – at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.
An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress,
Nor is there singing school but studying
Monuments of its own magnificence;
And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.
O sages standing in God’s holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing-masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.
Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.
Impressive, but I still believe that:
“Istanbul, not Constantinople no it’s Istanbul not Constantinople so if you’ve got a date in Constantinople she’ll be waiting in Istanbul” has far more poetic and muscial merit.