TOPKAPI

ON THURSDAY sunny and i spent the morning at topkapi palace - melbourne friends sandra and patrick arrived a couple of days ago and we met them afterwards for lunch on the waterfront and then caught the finicular railway up to Istiklal, the fabulous shopping street.  took them through the pera palace and londra hotels, both big, old and filled with nostalgia, one elegant and grand, the other also grand but kitsch beyond belief.
there's a wonderful feeling of bittersweet and nostalgia in istanbul, the  turkish have a word for the feeling of melancholia that's a part of the city, must find out what it is.

TULIPS AT TOPKAPI

Every wall surface at the palace is decorated - painted, tiled, inlaid with stone, gold leaf, its a huge series of elegant buildings right on the golden horn, so the terraces look out over the sea in all directions, absolutely beautiful

ah yes, the old photographing yourself in the mirror trick

in the harem,  the sultan's private bedchamber, fabulous domed ceiling

wonderful coloured glass, not leadlight, but somehow set in
with wood  fretwork, or maybe plaster

back on the bosphorus, lunch at Aphrodite's in Karakoy where the ferries come 
and go all day

patrick on istiklal

sunny took these zoom shots of one of the monster cruise ships that berth

down on the bosphorus

           they're like cities on the water,  thousands of people on board

FROM THE BALCONY . . .

the moon last night,  we were all sitting on the balcony on the clearest most beautiful balmy night we've had so far when suddenly a huge orange moon starting rising over the asian side.   i only got this one shot and my camera battery died  :0(