As a long-time resident of Istanbul, readers often ask me to recommend ‘must sees’ when they’re planning their first trip to this wonderful city. While I love to seek out lesser known sights I always tell people to see the main sights first. Sultanahmet, home to the old city, offers a huge range of fascinating…
Living in Istanbul which has a population of around 16 million people, it sometimes feels like everybody is out and about at the same time, making it impossible to get anywhere quickly. The streets throng with too many bodies cramming the small broken pavements, making me long for greener pastures. Any of my friends can…
Trees as well as flowers have long been associated with Istanbul and the most famous of these is the Erguvan or Judas Tree. From the Latin, cercis siliquastrum, the name is derived from the Greek and is a combination of two words, cercis meaning tree and siliquastrum meaning fruit. Istanbullu have long called it the Erguvan…
Get more out of your next trip to Istanbul by coming to the Asian side of the city and exploring Kadikoy with the help of a long term resident. I’ve used my knowledge and years of experience to research and create an audio walking tour called Stepping Back Through Chalcedon: A Kadikoy Walking Tour so…
If you’ve lived here for more than a year you’ll likely have had at least one conversation with a Turkish friend or colleague about Christmas Day and New Year’s Eve in Turkey. Despite your best efforts at explaining that Christmas is celebrated on the 25th of December and New Year’s Eve on the 31st, some…
A lot has changed in Istanbul since I first arrived. Like this memorable experience at the now defunct Topkapi bus station. “Anyone who’s spent any time in Turkey is likely to have caught a long distance bus. And if you’ve only ever had to use the Esenler bus station in Istanbul you’d be forgiven for…
I’m a long time Kadikoy resident and I love it. The maze of backstreets with no names where it’s easy to get lost as you stop and stare, duck in and out of little shops to taste and touch and buy. However when you’ve only come over on a day trip from your hotel in…
I’ve lived in Turkey for about 15 years now, and have almost completely adapted to the way of life. I’m no longer surprised if I’m offered a piece of stinky cheese direct from a goat skin and can use even the most basic of squat toilets without needing to hold my nose. I’m so assimilated…
I’ve met a lot of different people in Istanbul, all of whom called themselves Turks. I’ve written about some of the most memorable in Inside Out In Istanbul, in a piece called “The People You Meet”. Here’s an extracts from the story. “Working here as a teacher has given me a great opportunity to meet…
The idea for the Orhan Pamuk Museum of Innocence in Istanbul was based on his novel of the same name, and was conceived at the same time as the idea for the book. They simultaneously came into thought in the 1990s, and the novel was published in 2008 while the museum opened later, in 2012….