Istanbul is where its at!

I rarely sit around and watch TV anymore, instead I tape a few shows that I like and watch them. I find myself liking older shows that are off the air these days for some reason..anyway,one of my favorite shows is Anthony Bourdain's No Reservations, which airs on the Travel Channel. Two days ago I was catching up on taped episodes and watched the episode where he goes to Istanbul. I've always wanted to visit the Middle East, and especially Turkey, but it as great to watch Bourdain go there because he focuses a lot on food, but also on the culture. I adnt realized that Instanbul had become a party destination in addition to being a historic gem! I've definetely added it to my list of top 10 cities to visit in the next two or three years. Istanbul has also been named a 2010 Euorpean Capital of Culture according to this NY Times Article.

Must-see  sights in Istanbul :

 Topkapi Palace

 home (and Harem!) of the sultans

ome of the Ottoman sultans for nearly 400 years, Topkapi Sarayi ("Palace of the Cannon Gate") was the seraglio, the heart of the vast Ottoman Empire, ruled by the monarch who lived in Topkapi's hundreds of rooms with hundreds of concubines, children, and white and black servants.

 

 Ayasofya (Hagia Sophia)

changed the course of Western architecture; greatest church in Christendom for 1000 years.Its wide, flat dome was a daring engineering feat in the 6th century, and architects still marvel at the building's many innovations.

 Sultanahmet Mosque(blue mosque)

Islam's elegant answer to Ayasofya, with six minarets and blue interior tiles.Istanbul's imperial Mosque of Sultan Ahmet I (Sultan Ahmet Camii) is called the Blue Mosque because of its interior tiles, mostly on the upper level and difficult to see unless you're right up there with them

  

Byzantine Hippodrome

the political and recreational heart of Byzantine Constantinople and Ottoman Istanbul

  

Turkish & Islamic Arts Museum

facing the Blue Mosque on the Hippodrome, a treasure-house of 1000 years of fine art from the Ottoman (14th to 20th centuries), Seljuk (11th to 13th centuries), and earlier periods beginning in the 8th century.

The best art was religious art during the Ottoman Empire, just as it was in medieval Europe.

 

 Sunken Palace Cistern (Yerebatan Saray)

a subterranean "sunken palace" of 336 marble columns which could hold 80,000 cubic feet of water in case of drought or siege built back when Istanbul was Constantinople.

Remember the scene in the old James Bond movie From Russia With Love when Bond is rowing in a small boat through a forest of marble columns? That scene was filmed in Yerebatan.  left Walkways and atmospheric lighting were installed during the 1990s so you can see all its curious corners. There's even a little cafe for drinks and snacks

 Grand Bazaar

the ultimate medieval "shopping center," with 4000 shops, fun whether you buy or just browse

 Egyptian Spice Market

right at the southern end of the Galata Bridge on the Golden Horn in the Eminönü district, right next to the New Mosque (Yeni Cami),spices, dried fruits, nuts, seeds, and other edibles fill most of the shops, though jewelry and other high-margin goods have begun to move in.

 Beyoglu

 the romance of 19th-century Istanbul,in the 1800s this was the newer, more European section of Istanbul (Constantinople). Embassies were built here, foreign merchants lived and worked here, and they shopped at the posh boutiques along the Grande Rue de Péra, now called Istiklal Caddesi

 Dolmabahce Palace

the sultan's sumptuous new (1856) European-style palace on the Bosphorus; 285 rooms, 43 large salons, a 4000 kg (4-1/2-ton) Bohemian glass chandelier, and a Bosphorus-shore façade nearly a quarter mile (1/2 km) long. It's the grandest of Ottoman imperial palaces

Bosphorus Cruise

You set out from the Eminönü ferryboat docks (on the Golden Horn between Galata Bridge and Sirkeci Station) and head north toward the Black Sea.

Here are the sights you'll see (including six Ottoman palaces), divided into two parts, the Southern Bosphorus (from the Golden Horn and city center to the Bosphorus Bridge) and the Northern Bosphorus, (from the Bosphorus Bridge to the Black Sea)

Prince's Islands

The nine small islands about 20 km (10.5 miles) southeast of the center of Istanbul in the Sea of Marmara (Google Map) were called the Princes Islands by foreign chroniclers (because of Byzantine emperors' practice of sending bothersome princes there to be blinded, exiled or executed), but today's citizens of Istanbul call them simply Adalar ("The Islands")

who knee Turkish Delight was a ..real turkish delight?

No need to wine me and dine me

Because I'm better off picking up my own bottle :)


budget planner – Mint.com

Earthlings

Its not that I hate dogs-really, I'm just very petrified by the though of one sniffing around my toes and panting at the sight of me. Mentally, I can comprehend that a dog does not typically look at a human and envision a three course meal in the same way that a wild lion in the grass plains of Kenya might. Nevertheless, we all have our own reasoning for the way we interact with different animals. 

Animals are a large part of our lives despite our techy, gadget-driven cubicles of suburban and city life. When you get home after work, and your keys turn in the door, you will be  enthusiastically greeted by Snowy, your energetic and loyal golden retriever. After a quick dinner, you plan to go to your friend's for beers, where her sober and graceful Siamese cat Elsa will watch you unwaveringly with her piercing blue eyes from her perch at the window. You will mention your vacation plans at a country cottage complete with a  small pond at the rear scattered with myriad colored fish. As you gaze over the pond, you will remember how mom used to take you to the zoo where you would spend hours in the Aquatic Life Center trying to catch the alligator's attention. Despite saying he was having beers at your uncle
s, you knew that your dad would sneak off after Sunday lunch to the track to bet on magnificent,prize-winning stallions.Every spring,  your Aunt Joanie enters her pedigree poodle into the regional pet show competition where she vows to return the next year after placing second. In fulfillment of her role as the 'fun aunt', she used pick up her nieces and nephews once a summer and take you and your siblings to the circus, where your jaws would gape at the sight of 2 ton African elephants performing acrobatic feats. You could never decide which part was  your favorite; the circus, or piling into the minivan afterwords and heading to the American/Chinese buffet downtown, where you would pile chicken tenders and three-meat pizza high on your plate. What you are sure about, is that Aunt Joanie became the ultimately cool aunt when she gave you that  leather bomber jacket for your eighteenth birthday. It had that new leather smell, a result of powerful chemicals intent on overpowering the finished product from scent of the mooing bovines of India which once bore the skin.  Nevertheless, you were the coolest kid on the block..especially when you slicked back your hair with that thick goop that all the seniors used. It didn't matter that you had to spend 35 minutes in the shower using mom's shampoo to get the goop out- or that the goop had been tested in a laboratory on animals. Anyway, at least you never had to hang out much with Uncle Tom- he likes to go birdwatching at 6am on Saturday mornings ! Could anything be more boring than that!? Actually...going hunting with dad and grandpa was equally sleep-inducing..


When we are children, we learn that human beings differ from the rest of the animal kingdom in our capacity to make decisions. So how do we decide how to interact with animals in all the ways that we desire while still respecting their natural habitats and living conditions? Dogs may have been domesticated as early as 12,000 years ago but given the choice to live in the wild, would they  return to our doorsteps with our Sunday paper in tow?  Wouldn't any cat prefer to be sharpening her claws on some touch bark outside than on the synthetic scratch post you picked up at the pet store? The truth is, I dont know. How can I? One could argue that animals have become so accustomed to life in the modern world that they might not recognize their natural habitats as they once did. Another might argue they deserve the chance to decide for themselves although of course they will not have the privilege of making an educated decision like most of us do.


I started to think about human relationships with animals when I watched Earthlings, a documentary totally devoted to this subject. The docu breaks down our relationships with animals into about 4 categories as best as I can recall- Food, Clothing, Entertainment and Companionship. Essentially, humans fail in each of these categories, to  respect the natural propensity of animals by utilizing them for materialistic and often unnecessary purposes. While most of the movie addresses black/white subjects such as animal cruelty in the entertainment industry, some areas are gray and require a bit of soul searching, for lack of better words. For example, I love cats,and I had one for the first time in the fall of 2008, but he died unexpectedly after exhibiting weird symptoms and recovering (so I thought). I would love to have another cat and I always planned  on it. Recently, I even came to a decision that maybe getting a dog would help me overcome my fear of them-go figure. Then I watched Earthlings...and now I wonder if it is selfish for me to want to keep a dog, in the vacuous and unlively surroundings of a suburban home. Wouldn't he be better of adopted by a farmer with a nice patch of green grass elsewhere ,where he could chase after chickens and birds? Is it cruel to adopt a dog if you work 50 hours a week and live on the 13th floor of a high-rise building in New York, where the only fresh air that the dog gets comes in 15 minute spurts about three times a day when he must relieve himself? At the same time, wouldn't it be worse to leave him at the animal shelter where he lives in a 4 x 4 enclosure and has a 30 day rental that will end in euthanasia unless you adopt him? These are all questions I have been asking myself whenever I see someone's pet or when I think of adopting another cat sometime soon. Maybe if we all watched Earthlings and gained a fresh perspective on the animal kingdom, we can collectively effect it in a positive way. Despite the hierarchy of species on this earth, headed by humans with their infinite knowledge and wisdom, we are all earthlings.


R.I.P Keiko

i miss you little buddy

Oh, woe is me!

I love when Blanche Deveraux says that- its so old world southern and such a ladylike way to express frustration. Also such a fitting expression to describe how I feel at this moment about the world's events this week. I was having dinner a few minutes ago when my dad called me and told me about Rue. GG is so dear to me, I watch it every day without tiring of the same jokes...there was something special about what happened when those four women played those roles.

Rue Mclanahan suffered a stroke and is hospitalized at the moment. It came as such a shock because I saw her on tv about a month ago in what seemed to be great health. My heart goes out to her.