Category: Turkey
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Day 754 – Istanbul, Turkey – Going native in Kadıköy on the Asian side.
It is impossible for me to walk through the streets of Istanbul and not ponder chaos theory and particle swarm dynamics as a system of organization. The symphonic madness. The rivers of kinetic energy. The ancient flow. When I first came to Istanbul, my western eyes could only see the discordant mash of unrelated…
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Day 101 – Cappadocia, Turkey – Underground cities, fairy chimneys, and hot air balloons.
After nearly 4 months of travel Cappadocia was the first place actually on my list of travel goals. It’s a magical area in Central Anatolia about 6 hours northwest of Syria. The unique volcanic landscape left geological formations that were easy enough to carve with tools but withstood erosion. This allowed the inhabitants to…
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Day 91 – Next level street food and the truly amazing cuisine of Istanbul, Turkey. (part 4 of 4)
Istanbul is the center of worlds, the relentless meeting of east and west, and the cuisine is no less complex. Influences from all over the world combine to create something truly new and exciting to me. Outside of poor imitations this is my first experience with Turkish food and I can’t wait to try…
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Day 91 – Visiting the mosques, palaces, and antiquity of Istanbul, Turkey. (part 3 of 4)
Aside from the endless neighborhoods with their shops and food there are things to see in Istanbul. Big amazing things. Ancient things. The history of the city is almost impossible to comprehend. Layers on layers on layers. And some of the most famous structures in the world can be found here. Being both the…
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Day 91 – From Taksim Square to the Hagia Sophia: Walking Istanbul’s city center neighborhoods (part 2 of 4)
Istanbul is enormous. It has over 15 million people. That’s almost double the largest city in the United States. And it would take a few lifetimes to actually see it all. In my two weeks I barely scratched the surface on the city’s central neighborhoods (there are 936 neighborhoods in the Istanbul province). But…
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Day 91 – Istanbul, Turkey – An introduction (part 1 of 4)
It’s New Year’s Eve and I’m sitting around a makeshift table in a hidden little fourth story bar on a backstreet in the Tarlabaşı neighborhood of Istanbul. I’ve just proven to my skeptical table mates that you can in fact do two shots at the same time. The beer is flowing and the music…