In this post I’m going to show some photographs of Istanbul related to the Bosporus: a Bosporus cruise and sights along the Bosporus. And next comes Ukraine! We just added a few days in Istanbul before our Ukraine Viking cruise.

We toured Topkapi Palace on our 2013 visit to Istanbul. Since it was very crowded and I did not feel like standing in line to go into a museum, I stayed outside and photographed whatever I found. Part of what I found was very interesting trees, especially their bark.

I will start with the famous hollow tree. I read that a fungus attacked but not kill some of the trees, and some became hollow. (I think the black interior of the hollow tree was applied by man, not nature.)

The Topkapi Palace is now a museum but in the 15th and 16th centuries it served as the main residence and administrative headquarters of the Ottoman sultans. I must say our visit was not as pleasant as it could have been. First it was raining, and second it was so crowded there were very long lines to get into any of the buildings. So we mostly wandered the grounds, which were beautiful. It is also huge and we did not have a guidebook.

Istanbul residents must love to eat, because there is food everywhere: restaurants, take-out, and street stands. Then there is food to buy to prepare at home, which is always beautifully displayed. Teas you have never heard of, spices everywhere… Then there is tourist shopping. All of us have to buy something, even if it is not a handmade Turkish carpet.

On our way to our cruise in Ukraine, we spent a couple of nights in Istanbul, Turkey. We stayed in the Conrad Hotel in Besiktas, close to downtown Istanbul.

We toured Acoma Pueblo with Bob and Zeina Cook in late October 2018. Also known as Sky City, it is situated on a 367-foot high mesa in New Mexico. You check in for a tour at the Sky City Cultural Center and ride to the top of the mesa on a road that was blasted into the rock face in the 1950s. The original footpaths can be used for your return trip if you choose. (Click on any photo for a larger view.)

Below left is the view of the mesa from the road to the mesa. On the right is a view from the mesa.