JOURNEY 4
* Click on Pictures to enlarge
48 Hours in Istanbul - May 6-8 (2007)
This was a short business trip, from a cold and rainy Brussels to sunny and
warm Istanbul on Sunday 6th of May, 2007.
Arriving at the airport (Kemal Atatürk International), take care not to skip
the visa queue - as some unfortunate passengers first found out at the
customs, after having wasted already lots of time in that 2nd queue for
nothing!
If you´re from Belgium, Germany, Austria,....you all need a visum for 10 or
15 € (depending upon your nationality), only the native Swiss can enter
Turkey for free (???), what stroke by surprise me as I flew Swiss Air (via
Zurich).
A shuttle drive brought me quickly to the Conrad Hotel where the conference
was planned to take place. It is a very nice, classy hotel (see
also their website with a virtual photo tour), situated on a hill in the
Besiktas area, looking down on the Bosphorus (picture left). The hotel lobby
underlined the Eastern spirit with its splashing fountain in the middle of the
stairway hall (picture right).
As you can already imagine, the top roof view, where the bar
is situated, is really breathtaking: from there you look down on the Bosphorus ending in the Sea
of Marmara (picture left) and in the direction of the Black Sea, the majestic
Atatürk Bridge over the Bosphorus, connecting Europe with Asia, appears in
sight (picture right). The Monday evening boat trip allowed me to have a much closer look at
it.
The following evening, the boat tour started at the pier close to the
Dolmabahce Mosque (picture left); the extravagant Dolmabahce Palace, built in 1856
-when the Ottoman Empire was already in decline- was the second monument
we passed by (picture right) while tasting the aperitive on the deck :-))
Then the boat took us closer to the Atatürk Bridge, the 9th longest
suspension bridge, finished in October 1973, connecting (from left to right) the
districts Ortaköy and Beylerbeyi over a distance of 1074 m, reaching a maximum
elevation of 64 m above water level. On the right picture below, you can see the
Beylerbeyi Palace at the left side of the bridge, built for Sultan Abdül Aziz in 1861. Unfortunately we were
supposed to have dinner on board, without any time foreseen for visiting any of
these marvellous places.
Good that I visited Istanbul already in 1993 when I had the occasion to have a
closer look at all mandatory places in this giant city.
During dinner darkness came over town and we passed by many
illuminated places like the Fortress of Asia and Europe on both shores of the
Bosphorus.
When we finally returned, passing again underneath the Atatürk Bridge, this
time it was constantly changing colors from red, yellow to blue, sometimes
gaving the impression of fireworks. To end the story find hereby the
"blue" impression as illustration.
All nice stories have to end; my story unexpectedly took
somewhat more time on my way back to Brussels: the delayed flight in Istanbul
and heavy headwind caused me missing the last flight to Brussels from Zurich, so
Swiss Air put me in a comfortable hotel in rainy Winterthur as all the hotels in
Zurich were already booked for that night :-(
Finally arrived in Brussels about 12 hours later as originally planned.
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