Tagged With "Istanbul"
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Autumn: A season for soup
When the weather turns cool and the leaves start to fall, it always seems time for soup. Not that there aren't wonderful summer soups—gazpacho and cold plum soup come to mind—but fall and winter are the true soup seasons.
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Cruise to set sail with unknown itinerary
One of the great perks of a good road trip is not knowing where you'll stop along the way...just where you start and where you end (and sometimes, not even that!) So how about a 10-day cruise on a luxury ship where all you know is where it sails from and where it says farewell?
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'Security concerns:' Celebrity Cruises drops Istanbul overnights
Celebrity Cruises has dropped overnight stays at Istanbul for the rest of the cruise season, affecting eight cruises. The line had already skipped overnights twice in recent weeks, citing concerns about possible violence in the area.
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Eating our way through Istanbul (part 1)
Every city has its monuments, its churches and palaces, its prominent squares and avenues—and every visitor can easily learn how to find them. That’s true, too, for the most famous or most tourist-oriented restaurants as well. But it’s not as easy to wander off the beaten path and find the truly typical local foods, and especially not so easy to know what’s what when you find it.
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Gumbo's Pic of the Day, Apr. 5, 2015: Municipal Cathouse
Near the entrance of Istanbul's Topkapi Palace, once the home of the Sultans of the Ottoman Empire, we found the residence of another "royal family," the cats that are to be found throughout the city.
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Istanbul: Cruising the Bosphorus
One of the classics for visitors to Istanbul—and for quite a few Istanbulis as well—is a cruise up the Bosphorus, the 19-mile strait that connects the Black Sea to the Sea of Marmara, and ultimately the Mediterranean.
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The Snowmen of Istanbul
The February President's Week break in New York schools is one of our regular travel times, and a welcome escape from bad weather...usually. We've given up on the idea of only traveling to warm places, but we did think that Istanbul, weather forecasts and past history, would be a relief from snowbound New York. Hah!
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Hagia Sophia: Incredible in Every Way (Where Gumbo Was, #103)
Hagia Sophia is surely one of the most widely-recognized buildings on Earth, which is amazing considering that the world is so populated with other buildings modeled on it or even directly copied from it.
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Gumbo's Pic of the Day, Mar. 11, 2015: Dome of the Blue Mosque
The best-known active mosque in Istanbul, the Sultan Ahmet Mosque, popularly known as the Blue Mosque, stands next door to Hagia Sophia, which it replaced as the mosque of the Sultans of the Ottoman Empire. It was built in the early 17th century, on...
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Eating our way through Istanbul (Part 2)
Two days and some more touring after our first food walking tour in Istanbul, we were ready for more, and set out on our second. This tour, like the first, was organized by Culinary Backstreets.
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A Visit to Topkapi, Part 1
A visit to fabled Topkapi, imperial and administrative center of the Ottoman Empire for 400 years
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Istanbul's 'Blue Mosque'
On our first day in Istanbul, after arriving at 4:30 on a Sunday morning and heading straight to a nap we went for a walk to reconnoiter the neighborhood. What a neighborhood! Within 5 to 10 minutes easy walk we passed the Topkapi Palace, the massive Hagia Sophia, a large open square and came, face on, with the incredible Blue Mosque.
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Sirkeci Terminal, Istanbul: Last stop on the Orient Express
Last summer in Paris, we visited an exhibit at the Institute du Monde Arabe, featuring cars and artifacts of the Orient Express and its mystique. A significant part of the exhibit, given the venue, focused on the exotic spell it had for Europeans.
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Left-over currency? Ms. Pac-Man wants it for the Red Cross
Two Swedish airports have found a new way to relieve departing travelers of their unneeded local currency. A bank of videogames, set up at Stockholm's Arlanda and Goteborg's Landvetter airports have been set up to accept any currency at all to play...
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Street Food and Market: Istanbul
This was our third trip to Istanbul, and we had already covered all the major “must do” tourist locations and several of the minor ones. Yes, Istanbul has some great restaurants, but it’s time to relax and pay some attention to some of the street food.