Archive for August, 2007

Getting Lost in Istanbul

Monday, August 20th, 2007

As soon as I looked out of my cabin window this morning I knew that this port would finally provide the taste of old Europe that I’d yet to find on this voyage. Mosques and minarets dotted the landscape and bright red flags with the Muslin moon and star snapped briskly in the sea breeze. It was about 90 degrees already and it was only 8am.

The first stop of the day was at the Hippodrome, the site of chariot races in old Constantanople that attracted crowds of 100,000 people. The Egyptian obelisk that still stands at it’s center is over 3,500 years old and I suddenly realized that I’d never before seen anything older than a few hundreds years that wasn’t locked up behind glass in a museum.

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