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Istanbul: Beyoglu

Thursday 3rd June

In our sojourn in Istanbul at the beginning of the trip, we hadn't left the old city, apart from a brief and accidental bus loop and a Bosphorus cruise. So when we returned to Istanbul we decided to visit the newer part of town. Istanbul is enormous, so this was still only a tiny bit of the central city.

We caught the tram to Karakoy and the funicular up to Tünel. We had coffee in a cafe/bookshop waiting for the Pera Museum to open. This had a temporary exhibition by South American artist Fernando Botero, who was a real discovery to me. The permanent exhibitions include galleries of Orientalist paintings, Anatolian weights and measures, and Kütahya tiles and ceramics.

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painting by Fernando Botero
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a whole sea bass for lunch
We had lunch, then walked down Istiklal Caddesi, a pedestrianised boulevard, to Taksim Square. On the way we found a whole cluster of really nice bookshops, some of them with an extensive range of books in English.
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bookshop cats

Near Taksim we looked at an old cistern turned art gallery, and at an Orthodox Church.

Friday 4th june

We wandered around separately in the morning. I walked back past the university and had a look at the Aqueduct of Valens. The Calligraphy Museum was closed, as was the Binbirdirek Cistern.

Gabi and I met up to say goodbye and pick up our bags, before she got her shuttle bus to Ataturk airport and I got mine to Sabiha Gokcen airport.

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