TripAdvisor named London as the world’s best destination
London has been named the world’s best destination by travel review site TripAdvisor, as it continues preparations to host the 2012 Olympic Games.
The city fended off competition from runners up New York and Rome to be named top in the annual Travellers’ Choice Destinations Awards, which rank global cities on the basis of votes from millions of travelers which use the site.
It was one of five European destinations to make the top ten list, which also featured San Francisco, Marrakech in Morocco, Istanbul in Turkey and Siem Reap in Cambodia.
For many, the award for London will not be entirely unexpected — the city is currently basking in the spotlight as it prepares to celebrate the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, followed by the London 2012 Olympic Games.
It has already been named the best city in the world to visit this year by travel guide publisher Lonely Planet, in an influential global ranking published late 2011.
This week, the city’s world-famous Oxford Street shopping destination kicked off a campaign which will see the entire West End covered in 500 British flags ahead of the summer, each measuring 3.5 meters in height and placed in popular tourist hotspots.
Last month, officials predicted that tourist figures would reach 12.7 million this year (up five percent on 2011), an optimistic projection which appears to contradict suggestions some visitors could be put off by the publicity.
Travellers’ Choice Destinations Awards – winners
1. London
2. New York City
3. Rome
4. Paris
5. San Francisco
6. Marrakech, Morocco
7. Istanbul
8. Barcelona
9. Siem Reap, Cambodia
10. Berlin
Source: TripAdvisor
via London dubbed world’s best city by TripAdvisor; City tops Travellers’ Choice Destinations Awards – NY Daily News.
If your list of dream travel destinations does not currently include Istanbul, let me tell you, straight up: You’re doing it wrong.
Move over Paris, Barcelona — these traditional European hotspots need to make room for the best thing you never knew you were missing. Do yourself a favor and book a ticket right now. Turkey — it’s the place to be.
What’s that, you’re here already? The flight was smooth? Wonderful. Welcome to the land of lost cats and whirling dervishes, hookah lounges and more history than you can possibly imagine. This one city spans two continents, a handful of bridges and plenty of fascinating neighborhoods. You could easily spend months here and still not see all there is to see. Istanbul is just that cool. And now that you’ve arrived, I’ll take you on a little walking tour. A “24 hours in Istanbul” sort of thing. Very Rick Steves.
Start your day with a visit to the Blue Mosque. The hundreds of hand painted tiles that decorate this sacred space will blow your mind, plus, it’s free! Marvel at the massiveness at the pillars and the surprising airiness of the interior; the architecture alone is borderline miraculous. When you’ve exited the mosque, meander through the Hippodrome and then follow the tram tracks down to the water where you can locate a fish sandwich for lunch. Fresh and delicious, all you need is a bit of lemon juice as seasoning, nothing more.
Cross the Galata Bridge and watch out for stray hooks — the fishermen don’t always check to see who’s walking behind them when they cast off. Enjoy the panoramic view from up here; it’s pretty spectacular. When you’ve made your way to the Taksim side, take some time to explore the area. I’d recommend a visit to the Istanbul Modern; you can walk along the waterfront en route to the museum, and the collection itself is actually pretty accessible. Tickets don’t cost more than a few lira, and you can easily spend hours getting lost in the vast array of thought-provoking sculpture, photographs, paintings and installations.
On your way back to the bridge, stop at Karakoy Gulluoglu for a serving of baklava. Be sure to ask for some cream on the side (they’ll know what you’re talking about), to cut the overwhelming sweetness of the pastry. Revel in the deliciousness — life will never be better than it is right now.
Once you’re back on the Sultanahmet side of the bridge, find the old spice market. This indoor collection of vendors and booths is filled with equal parts tourists and locals, and in my opinion, makes for a much more satisfying experience than the nearby Grand Bazaar. Haggle for saffron and get your hands on at least a quarter kilo of Turkish Delight in a variety of flavors — it might seem like a lot, but it’ll go quick, don’t worry. Pro tip: If you have enough basic knowledge of any foreign language to convince vendors that you’re from somewhere that is not the U.S., use it! Everyone loves to rip off Americans — it’s practically a sport. At the very least, pretend to be from Canada. Or New Zealand.
Enjoy sunset at the Hippodrome, where the silhouette of the Hagia Sophia and the Blue Mosque loom majestically against a dusky sky. If you’ve timed it right, you might even hear the evening prayer call echoing from the many nearby minarets. But by now, you’re probably hungry again. Not to worry.
For dinner, you have to find Sembol Meat House. It doesn’t look like much and it’s kind of tucked away in the back streets behind the Hagia Sophia, but trust me, this place is awesome. Order the lentil soup (only 4 lira — that’s roughly the equivalent of an ice cream cone) and anything else on the menu. Take your time enjoying the hilarious and generally awkward photos of enthusiastic patrons that cover the walls (Challenge: $5 to the first person who finds the picture of me up there.) and when the adorable man who took your order asks if you’d like some apple tea at the end of your meal, say yes.
The rest of the evening should be spent in one (or more, if you’re an overachiever) of the following ways:
-Enjoying nargile aka water pipe aka hookah.
-Exploring the [wild] nightlife in Taksim.
-Eating the Turkish Delight you bought earlier and attempting to befriend the locals who run the hostel you’re staying at.
via Istanbul, or Why has it taken me 20 years to get here | The Daily Californian.
Istanbul is the only city in the world that sits on two continents — Europe and Asia. As Turkey’s biggest city, it is every bit the modern metropolis, with constant traffic by bridge and ferry over the Bosphorus Strait that connects East and West. But it is the city’s history that tourists come to experience, and they know just where to find it: Istanbul’s Old City, Sultanahmet.
A cobblestone street in the Sultanahmet area of Istanbul. (JG Photo/Wahyuni Kamah)
“Tourists visiting Sultanahmet say they have seen the real Istanbul,” said Dilek, my Turkish guide. Located on Istanbul’s European bank, the historical center is one of the city’s most popular tourist attractions.
Along with Eminonu, Sultanahmet is the oldest and longest-inhabited part of modern Istanbul. It is a former capital of three great world empires: The Roman Empire (AD 330-395), the Byzantine Empire (395-1204 and 1261-1453) and the Ottoman Empire (1453-1922).
The Roman Emperor Constantine the Great established the city as new Rome in 330 and named it after himself, Konstantinopolis, or Constantinople in English. During the Turkish Ottoman Empire it was called Kostantiniyye. In 1930, the Turkish authorities adopted Istanbul, a name that has existed since the 10th century, as the sole name of the city.
Istanbul’s most ancient and historical buildings are concentrated in the Sultanahmet area. In 1985, it was added to the Unesco World Heritage List.
On a recent visit to the Old City, I found it to have a fascinating mix of modern and traditional life, a place where secular and religious life run in parallel.
The Sultanahmet area is named after Sultan Ahmet Khan I, the 14th sultan of the Ottoman Empire. During his reign, he built the Sultanahmet Mosque, between the years 1609 and 1616. It is popularly known as the Blue Mosque, because of the blue tiles that decorate the interior walls, and is considered a masterpiece of mosque architecture in Islamic history.
The mosque faces the Hagia Sophia, the world’s largest cathedral for nearly a thousand years, built during the Roman Empire. In 1453, Turkish Ottoman Sultan Mehmet Fatih II conquered Constantinople and brought an end to the Byzantine Empire. During his reign, the Hagia Sophia was converted into the Ayasofya Mosque. The first Turkish president, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, converted it to a museum in 1935.
These days, the area between Sultanahmet Mosque and the Hagia Sophia Museum is crowded with tourists, open-air cafes, street food vendors and souvenirs shops. Here, you can find tourists from many parts of the world.
Just behind Sultanahmet Mosque there is a large square, which is popular with both tourists and locals. Sultanahmet Square was once a hippodrome, an arena for horse- or chariot-racing during the Roman Empire. Today, the only clues to this past are the monuments erected during the Greek and Roman empires, such as the Serpent Column, Obelisk of Thutmose and Walled Obelisk.
Sitting on a bench in Sultanahmet Square, I enjoyed observing these monuments as flocks of pigeons took to the air. From where I sat, I could even catch a glimpse of Sultanahmet Mosque with its six soaring minarets, confirming my opinion that it is a beautiful structure from any angle.
To feel the atmosphere of ancient times, I decided to take a walk to the area just next to Sultanahmet Mosque, where shops, hotels, restaurants, cafes, galleries and travel agents are concentrated. Once a residential area, it has now been converted into a commercial and business district. But its ancient atmosphere remains intact with its narrow, undulating cobblestone streets, hemmed in by old buildings. Some roads are so narrow that only one car can squeeze through at a time. A newcomer like me could easily become lost among the labyrinthine alleyways.
As I walked, I saw many old houses that had been converted into commercial sites like hotels or cafes. Even these old buildings were equipped with modern apparatus like CCTV cameras. Only a few people still live in the area.
Since the Sultanahmet area is situated on a hill, it offers a dazzling view of the Marmara Sea. Most hotels or restaurants have open terraces on the top for customers to enjoy the sea view. Because of its location, the room prices in this area are higher than elsewhere in the city, although several lodgings for backpackers can also be found.
Despite its commercial and touristic atmosphere, I was still able to get a glimpse of normal Turkish life in the morning, as street vendors sold Turkish bread from their open carts and shoes polishers set out to work in Sultanahmet Square.
The best way to explore the Sultanahmet area is by foot. The area is clean and there is a lot to see along the way. Just be wary of shop attendants who invite you in for tea just to make you feel obliged to buy something.
On my way back, I stopped by at the tomb of Sultan Ahmet, next to Sultanahmet Mosque, to pay my respects. Other sultans from the Ottoman Empire and their family members are also buried in this beautiful mausoleum.
I thought about the 120 emperors and sultans who had ruled the city over 1,600 years and felt humbled to be standing in the midst of such greatness.
Who would have though that in a modern city of 12.5 million people I could learn about the might and power of some of the world’s greatest and most powerful empires in history.
via Living History in Istanbul’s Old City | The Jakarta Globe.
If you think romance is dead, you can always fly somewhere it isn’t.
Jessica
I met Annika in the restaurant down the street from my guesthouse in Istanbul. Her sturdy Scandinavian appearance made her seem self-sufficient and tough, which was unfair, as she was really quite meek and uncertain.
It was her fourth trip to Turkey in six months. The first time she went to visit, it was for the experience. She’d recently separated from her husband and the trip gave her something to plan for, to focus on during the cold months of her divorce proceeding. She pictured herself walking through the markets, sitting in foreign cafes sipping sweet tea, soaking in the exotic cityscapes. It was on one of her solo walks soon after she arrived that Annika met Evrin.
I groaned inwardly when she told me he sold carpets. I’d been approached by these guys as well, standing outside of their shops with their oiled hair, plying you with coffee, tea — anything just to get you inside, where they could keep you captive for hours in their tiny stores, flinging down carpet after carpet from their tall piles even as you protested. Often, as I walked past, they resorted to putting a hand to their chest and belting out a line of a song. Whenever this happened, I seemed to be the only one embarrassed.
In front of the Hagia Sophia
Annika, however, was charmed by all of this swaggering, singing and public grooming. Her vacation romance quickly turned into a full-fledged love affair. They ran together down the small cobbled streets and kissed in the shadows of gigantic mosques. Since then, she’d returned to Istanbul whenever possible, taking weekend breaks to the coast with Evren, trying to learn Turkish and watching him play in a traditional band when he was finished with work at the carpet store. She didn’t know if it would work out in the long run, but she desperately wanted it to.
He’d told her his family wouldn’t accept her and that she shouldn’t move permanently to the city. She told me she thought often about converting, but worried in the end even that wouldn’t be enough to win over his family. She worried often, she said, her hands twisted the mug of tea in front of her. She felt absolutely sick with worry and love.
She brought out her wallet and showed me a picture. He was handsome but his smile curved up arrogantly on one side. I observed that he had a sort of Clarke Gable quality to him. This made her happy.
Annika wasn’t the only woman I’d met in Istanbul who had ended up in some sort of love affair. There were several other girls in my guesthouse with Turkish boyfriends they’d met in the tourist district. And there was the woman who I met on a veranda one day who told me that she went to Turkey for a month every summer and every year she found a man to be with. Turkey seemed to be full of foreign women in romantic entanglements. They were like the sex tourists I knew in Thailand, but instead of cheap blowjobs, they sought out flattery and romance.
“I think maybe we like them because they give us so much attention,” Annika told me as we ate soup one afternoon. “They take the time to look into our eyes. We are so used to being modern, to being treated like men. And the way we meet men is after too much alcohol on the weekends. I guess some things never change. Even in our modern culture girls still want to be treated like ladies.”
I saw her only once more. She seemed nervous and distracted. She’d gotten no further commitment from Evren, who seemed to almost be avoiding her, and only had a few days left before she had to fly home to Norway as she had a job to go to on Monday morning. I felt bad for her.
Later I wondered who I was, really, to feel sorry for anyone, to be so cynical about love when my own relationship was tenuous in even its best moments. But I knew from experience that the most cripplingly painful lovesickness comes from being the one who is more in love.
This study covers the socio-political, intellectual and institutional dynamics of underground resistance to the Allied occupation in Istanbul. The city was clearly not the seat of treason against the Nationalist struggle for independence, nor was collaboration with the occupiers what it was made out to be in Republican historiography. Above and beyond the international conjuncture in post-WWI Europe, factors that helped the Turkish Nationalists to succeed were: inter-Allied rivalries in the Near East that carried over to Istanbul; the British, French and Italians as major occupation forces, failing to establish a balance of strenght among themselves in their haste to promote respective national interests; the victors underestimating the defeated as they were engrossed with bureaucracy and were assailed by the influx of Russian refugees, Bolshevik propaganda, and the Turkish left.
via Istanbul Under Allied Occupation, 1918-1923 – Bilge Criss – Google Kitaplar.
Traditional restaurant (Andre Vltchek/ People’s Daily Online)
It is late afternoon in historic Taksim neighborhood of Istanbul and Kafe Ara is full of local intellectuals. The walls are decorated with enormous black and white photographs depicting old days of the city: ancient fishing boats, exhausted laborers arriving to the jetty, historic trams crawling through Galata Bridge. All these photos were taken by one of the greatest Turkish photographers of Armenian origin – Mr. Ara Guler who is now 84 years old.
As I write this article, Mr. Guler is sitting at the large wooden table right next to me. He is still loved and popular, never short of company of both young and old people who ask him to autograph his books and to share his thoughts on this city.
Once in a while we look at each other and smile. At one point he begins eyeing my Leica camera, then he winks at me: “I have 50 of them at home. I even knew personally the family… You know… After they went digital, it is not the same…” I still love Leicas, but I politely agree with the old master.
While his work is considered phenomenal, as one of the great symbols of Istanbul, for many inhabitants and visitors alike it is synonymous with nostalgia and melancholy. Taksim neighborhood is constantly changing. While still full of history and architectural beauty, it became one of the most expensive places on earth, and according to the great Turkish Marxist filmmaker Serkan Koc – one of the ‘most capitalist’.
“Istanbul from my childhood has changed, it already disappeared”, laments Ara Guler. “The new construction is everywhere. Even when you think about Istanbul some 50 years ago, it was already gone. We have been living in the city called Istanbul, but it is just imaginary city. The real city went mad; its culture is finished. New generations – they are all empty. I see emptiness all around me.”
But standing near us, young student and translator, Erkin Oncan, is smiling warmly as he is listening to the words of the master. And his smile confirms what is so obvious even as the barrage of bitter words flies from the mouth of that great old photographer: Ara Guler actually loves his eternal city – Istanbul. He is quarreling with it, nagging it, criticizing it as old lovers would. But his affection is clearly evident in both his words and his remarkable images.
via Istanbul at the crossroad – People’s Daily Online.
