Istanbul, Turkey

Hagia Sofia, Istanbul, Turkey

I’ve been in Istanbul for over a week now and find the city constantly surprises me in ways I couldn’t have anticipated.  It’s hard to imagine any other city in the world more deserving of the term ‘crossroads.’ The city quite literally straddles two continents—Europe and Asia, separated by the Bosphorus Strait as it runs from the Black Sea to the sea of Marmara and on to the Aegean and Mediterranean.

Shoe shine stand, Istanbul, Turkey

This has kept Istanbul in the spotlight for most of recorded history. The Greeks were here, the Romans were here, and the Ottoman Turks were here. Empires long gone while Istanbul remains.

So it came as no surprise that Istanbul would be a cosmopolitan, diverse, sprawling city full of color, bluster, food, music, art and commerce. What was surprising to me was the immense unflappability of the Turks. The fallout from the Syrian civil war had brought refugees and terrorism to Turkey’s front door.

Little more than a month before I arrived, a suicide bomber had blown himself up on Istanbul’s busiest pedestrian boulevard, Istiklal Street. Embassies around the world advised their citizens against travel to Turkey. The Turks of Istanbul, however, seemed to act with a collective will by coming out in droves to shop, eat, and stroll the city’s streets in defiance of the terrorists.