Old & New İstanbul (1) / Eminonu Galata Bridge

Last month National Geographic magazine celebrated its 10th year in Turkey with a beautiful exhibition, with the photos taken in Turkey but have not been published before..They also gave a small album of these photos with the April issue. As I am always crazy about old photographs, it was such a big treat for me..

Now I will try to show you some places of İstanbul with the help of these photos..
Photo of Yeni Cami from the Galata bridge. Taken by Maynard Owen Williams in 1928

another one from 1925 by Branson de Cou /Ewing Galloway

and today...

Galata Bridge is the bridge that spans the Golden Horn and the very fist bridge constructed at this place  in 1894. The one in NG photo was the 4th bridge built in 1912. The current and the 5th one opened in 1994.

The Ottoman imperial mosque behind is called the New Mosque, but it was finished in 1665!!!

Championship Night..

We heard on the TV that the Fenerbahce football team has entered the Baghdat Street, so we ran to the street and we started to wait.....

our little one wearing the team's jersey was quiet patient and the team was coming with a bus and they only have to cover about 6 km to reach where we were waiting but nobody was on the horizon and we kept waiting...

 Finally about 3 hours later they came and along with thousand fans we cheered and Hera barked..

There are 3 big football clubs in İstanbul and champion of this year Fenerbahce considered as the football club of Asian side of the city.

Baghdat is the main street in an upper-scale residential area of Asian side of İstanbul . The one-way avenue with old plane trees is full of shopping malls, department stores, fashion garment stores, restaurants of international and local cuisine, pubs and cafés etc. Its an excellent place for walk and window shopping..

Vacation Dreams..

We came back to İstanbul about 10 days ago. Hubby has worked at the F1 race in İstanbul..Not much going on with me nowadays. I am reading and studying about our upcoming vacation in Crimea. Unfortunately I could not find much on the internet..Looks like nobody blogged about it..

Today is May 20th which is suppose to be one of the wonderful spring/summer day but İstanbul is kind of freezing. It looks like a mild winter day with rain...So there is not much to do but to dream about visiting this marvelous place in June..

Fashionable Ama from Ethiopia

Ama is a lady from Ethiopia with beautiful earrings. She made them her self by using the luggage tags of Turkish Airlines. On a lucky day she went to the market and a Turkish tourist wandering there took a photo of her and then sent it to Turkish Airlines...

Then she became the new star of the company and played in the recent commercials. Considering that Kevin Costner, Manchester United Football team, Caroline Wozniacki and Kobe Bryant were the previous faces of the company, its a pretty big accomplishment for Ama, and I just love the commercial and the sweet story behind it.

You can watch it from here:
http://vimeo.com/22840876

and at the end, take notice how the whole family singing the jingle. Its very sweet...

For some one special..

Thank you mum for being my mum. I love you.. 

Happy Mother's Day!!!

An English Farm

We had the chance to spend some time on a lovely farm during our visit to England. It was beautiful, green, and very quiet just as I has imagined before..

Lush green fields. Horses on one side and 14.000 chickens on the other. I have been told that they are laying 12.000 eggs per day. I have to say that eggs were delicious..

I dont know about chickens but I think some of the horses really liked me or maybe they just wondered about the woman on the fields with the camera...

This beautiful farm belongs to the sister of my sister-in law and sure we had a very warm welcome...

Conwy - Wales

During our trip to England, we managed to spent a day in the lovely Northern Wales town of Conwy.

Conwy is a beautiful seaside town with a magnificent castle which had been constructed by Henry 1. between 1283 and 1289. It was a very windy and cold day but we still succeeded to spend some time in the towers of this amazing building.. I just loved the castles in England..

We also thought that its best to try a classic British tradition here: Fish and chips and mushy peas.