It's both convenient and true to explain that we chose Turkey as a destination because Tim was there for a conference last October, and decided it would be a good place to bring a family.
But it's been true for longer that I have always wanted to go to Turkey, and would tell anyone who asked that if there were any place in the world I could go, it would be Turkey. In my own ignorance, I assumed that a country pinned between the Balkans, Caucasus, and the Middle East would be both dangerous and inaccessible, and it simply never occured to me to find out otherwise. It just seemed fabled, mythical, and remote.
I think it might have been reading Agatha Christie (Murder on the Orient Express, Cat Among the Pigeons) that first sparked my interest, followed by Guy Gavriel Kay's Sarantium series, Dorothy Dunnet's Lymond Chronicles, and Rose Macauley's Towers of Trebizond that added to my fascination. But it wasn't just fiction - even without the help of such storytellers, the mere fact that Turkey has been home to rising and falling empires, wandering tribes, invaders and conquerors, and brought fully into the present day by a powerfully charismatic leader (and it's a good thing Mustafa Kemal Ataturk was a handsome man, because there is no escaping his image in Turkey) that is fascinating enough. It's a land of fable, still telling it's own story.
But it's the old stories that most powerfully exert their pull in Istanbul. The Aya Sofya defying time, earthquakes, by the mere fact that it's still standing, across from the Blue Mosque, nearly a millenia younger. There's so many ruins in evidence that it boggles the mind that it's a mere fraction of archeological evidence still layered deep under the streets and buildings. They're still digging and still discovering, and rewriting history with each uncovered strata.
More pictures of Istanbul at Flickr here: Istanbul
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