If you take the Bosporus cruise, you will see the Rumeli Hisarı Fortress on the European side…read more Don't miss visiting this fortress because there are great views and there is so much history in this place! In 1453, after a thousand years, the Byzantine Empire came to an end with the Fall of Constantinople. For the next 500 years the Ottoman Empire ruled the area. Rumeli Hisarı means 'Fortress in the land of the Romans.' It was built in 1452 by the order of the Ottoman sultan Mehmed II. You can take Bus 25E (Kabataş--Sarıyer) to reach the fortress. Get out at the Rumeli Hisarı stop.

You can't miss this passageway! There is a nice stained glass design above the entrance on…read moreIstaklal Street. Cool little arcade full of restaurants (a few shops too). I heard from a tour guide that Russian Emigres got permission to sell flowers in this arcade a hundred years ago or so. The word Çiçek means flower in Turkish. The restaurants are traditional meyhane, which is a Persian word which means something like 'wine house'. In short, there are pubs there. I found this on a tour with the fantastic guide by the name if Katerina. Check out the Culinary Backstreets Tour of Istanbul.

Our local tour guide (Safiye) took us down for a stroll on İstiklal Avenue, which is a well known…read moreshopping street in Istanbul. That included taking us inside St. Anthony of Padua Roman Catholic Church. In a City full of stunning mosques and sprinkling of Eastern Orthodox, visiting this Roman Catholic establishment kind of turned the tourist saying of "Oh Joy, another Church!" on its head. We found the interior to be very impressive and comforting. This is the largest church in Istanbul and has Italian pedigree, both in its founding and in its clergy today. Depending on the day of the week, one could attend Mass in either Turkish, English, or Italian. Pope John XXIII preached here for 10 years while he was the Vatican's ambassador to Turkey before being chosen as pope. He is known as "the Turkish Pope" because of his fluency in Turkish and his oft-expressed love for Turkey and Istanbul. Gayle and I were able to admire a statue of him installed within the church's courtyard. I also detected a bit of Byzantine/Eastern Orthodox influence within a few of the "Icons" inside the church. One was how the 3 fingers are put together to signify the Trinity, with the back 2 fingers following. And if we stuck around longer, my guess is that we might have seen people crossing themselves in either the Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox mode.

Went here for Christmas Eve service - absolutely beautiful!! Decorated to the nines both inside…read moreand out. If you're around Taksim Square on Christmas Eve, stop by for a visit at least. If you want to stay for mass on Christmas Eve, come early. 45 minutes before the service and it was standing room only. Very diverse crowd!

İstiklal Avenue means Independence and is the longest pedestrian street in the historic Beyoğlu…read moredistrict of Istanbul, one of the most famous avenues in the city, known for the cute red trams, lots of shopping - malls, US stores, restaurants, some street food, elegant buildings, fun to walk it. We found our way from Galata Tower and once we reached it, we explored it and stopped along the way to check out stores (cute bookstores), coffee shops, a cool passage, an Italian church -of St. Anthony of Padua(the biggest catholic one in Istanbul) and so on. Lots of American chains, clothes, food (fast-food) which we avoided. But we tried a cheese borek (salty cheese pastry) from the gentleman with the cart. It is fun to see the vintage trams passing by. We continued to the end, till we reach the end of it marked by the French Institute and Taksim Square. It is worth checking it out while visiting Istanbul, not super crowded, but very lively!

Istiklal Caddesi is a great/must see area of Istanbul. Basically, what this location presents is a…read morestreet full of all kinds of shops, cafes, galleries, restaurants, and a bunch of other businesses. It truly shows off the unique culture of Istanbul. My suggestion is that you come here early in the day on a weekday. During this time frame the street is not too crowded and you can really take time checking things out. On the weekends and later in the day, this area can get pretty hectic and very crowed with people. If you want to avoid that, come during the off-hours. I suggest the way to visit this street is to walk over the Galata Bridge. This bridge, of course, provides you with a great view of Istanbul. From there, just follow the main street up. If you have any location concerns, GPS will easily take you here. This is a long street with an uphill trek. Of course, that also means, on the way down, it is a downhill trek. Nothing too steep or anything like that, but it can provide you with a bit of a cardio workout if you are a fast paced walker like myself. Overall, this is one of the must see areas of Istanbul. This street provides you with an excellent view into the modern shopping and culinary culture of Istanbul.

This is a really high end shopping area with really nice hotels, the view from various areas is…read morenice the architecture of the buildings are very nice. You can find highly regarded name brand shops such as Louis Vuitton, Gucci, Prada, Christian Louboutin and many more. Everything can be spaced out a little bit but I honestly think it's worth the walk because it's a beautiful area, and if you're trying to drive from shops and shop you will be wasting a lot of time because there's traffic in this area for cars most of the day. To go along with all the shopping that you most likely will be doing you will find many good restaurants to curb your appetite once you get one.

I understandably had mixed feelings as I walked down Nisantasi's Rumeli Caddesi (Rumeli St. In…read moreNisantasi. Istanbul.) This visit was intensely personal. The last time a member of our family had walked down these streets was in 1955, when my father, then a young man, born and raised in Istanbul, and a member of the Greek minority who had been in Istanbul (Constantinople) since before Byzantium, and was a loyal citizen of the Turkish state, and former officer in the Turkish army, who along with his brother, my uncle, Giorgo, (whom I am named after,) was the owner of a thriving bakery. Until that night in 1955, when relations between Greece and Turkey worsened over the Cyprus issue, and as part of Anti-Greek minority riots taking place in Istanbul and other parts of Turkey, a mob had gathered in front of his bakery. As my father and uncle slept in the bakery, (they lived in the back of the bakery as was the custom then,) the attack on the bakery began. Among other destructive acts, someone threw a petrol bomb through the front window, setting the bakery on fire and burning my uncle to death (who fatefully had decided to sleep in the front that night,) as my father fled out the back door, barefoot, with only his night clothes on. He joined the throng of other Greeks and minorities as they ran through the Sisli neighborhood, down towards the Golden Horn and The Ataturk Bridge where they leapt into the water for safety to escape the mobs chasing them down to the waterway. He and others were pulled from the water by lifeboats sent from a Japanese freighter that was passing through the nearby Dardanelles straits, and after a harrowing sea voyage, were resettled in Greece, along with other Greek refugees expelled from their ancestral homeland. I and my siblings were thus born elsewhere, when arguably Istanbul was (and is) our family's ancestral home, and also where we all should've been born, raised and prospered, as children of one of the most well known and successful bakeries in that area. (Interesting note: There was a military base near my father's bakery, and many of his best customers were Turkish Army Officers, who came frequently to drink my father's famous Turkish Coffee, eat his fabulous Oriental and European sweets, and to play "tavli", (kind of a backgammon type game, played throughout the Near East.) Despite my father's close relationships with many military officers from the nearby Turkish Army base, and the fact that he himself had been an officer in the army, no one came to his aid while the bakery was burning.) So as I tried to find the exact location of the new building that took the place of my father's bakery, (it was burned to the ground,) i used all the verbal clues he had left me before he died. He had told me that his bakery was on Rumeli Caddesi, in Sisli, next door to the famous Turkish author Orhan Pamuk's house. He and my father were friends, and he was a frequent visitor to the bakery. So if what I had been taught was correct, the location had now become one of this area's (and Istanbul's) most popular McDonald's. With a certain amount of hesitation, I entered the restaurant, and as I approached the counter with my friend, who also spoke Turkish, he suddenly told the staff working there that my father owned the business that was there before McDonald's and that my family had been forcibly expelled during the violence against the Greek minority in the late 1950's. As I introduced myself and began to talk with the young people who worked there, (I speak okay Turkish, as I had learned from my parents,) suddenly one young man spoke up and said in Turkish, (translation,) "Damn, your family owned a store on this street? This is one of the most expensive and exclusive areas of Istanbul. If you still owned this property, you would be really rich!" They then treated me to an ice cream cone on the house. I was dazed as I left, and amid the feelings of gratitude for the kindness and warmth shown to me, I had a large lump in my throat as my mind raced. How life's twists and turns affect ordinary people, and through no fault of their own, how their world can be destroyed in a second caused by the whims of bigger powers and others. And the enduring injustice of it all is the legacy of this visit..............

Walking downhill from Kazasker Ivaz Efendi Mosque, passed the Millennnuim Hotel, before you get to…read moreTopkapi University you'll find the Panagia Blachernae Holy Spring and Church, or the Vlaherna Meryem Ana Church. The Orthodox Christian church is built upon a sacred spring, it's one of the most tranquil and peaceful places in Istanbul. It used to protect the city with a relic, Mary's scarf. Believers thought the city would fall to invaders without the relic, and just 2 decades after the original church and the scarf were burned up in a fire the Ottomans conquered Constantinople. Panagia means Mother Mary, the All Holy. All the churches in Istanbul to Mary are panagia, this one is Panagia Blachernae. Inside the church building by the end of the courtyard is the holy spring. If you bring your own bottle you can take some of the water home to Greece with you. I'm a Buddhist from Milwaukee so I thought it might be blasphemous or at least disrespectful to fill up my walking water bottle here. Muslim women visit this church to ask for favors from the priest. It's a local Turkish belief that certain evil spells can only be undone by a faithful Orthodox priest. I wish I knew this before the first time I was denied tenure.

Fascinating mosque right on the water. Commissioned in 1777 the mosque suffered a dome collapse in…read more1983 and has been restored. It looks stunning and the restoration was perfect. Sadly we arrived at prayer so were unable to go in. But if you're in the area it is definitely worth a stop.