Sunday stroll in Istanbul
January 30, 2011
In the land of Turkish carpets, one hardly expects to see a masterpiece like this one. Today’s agenda, which was decided upon after we got up and were dressed, consisted of breakfast, walking through the Hippodrome area, walking down the hill along the tram tracks, and seeing the basilica cistern.
Breakfast, well lunch, but what’s in a name. This is at the Doy Doy Restaurant, just up the street from our hotel.
Then on to the Hippodrome area. There was once a hippodrome here, but now all that remains are three structures – Walled Column (above), Serpent Column (below) and Egyptian Obelisk (below that) all from the 4th century C.E.
Then we were off down the hill to get a closer look at things we’ve seen at higher speed from the tram.
Like this old growth tree.
This is the Parade Pavilion where sultans would view parades.
On to the Basilica Cistern…
…which is inhabited by fish.
See the rest of the photos at
http://picasaweb.google.com/kangayayaroo/HippodromeBasilicaCistern#
Brilliant.
Yeah!!! Love the old trees. In America they would be trimmed or taken out due to someone maybe getting bonked on the head by a branch and then suing the city-I like the artistic shapes of the branches and trunks.