Topkapi

We visited Topkapi on a beautiful Sunday afternoon along with all the other tourists and half the natives in Istanbul that day. Did I say it was crowded? In one respect, though, the crowds worked in our favor: we were able to get into the Harem without being required to join a tour group. This meant we could go at our own pace, sometimes having a moment of relatively crowd-free quiet here and there as the tour groups flowed around us. Though we may have missed some of the juicy anecdotes, we did get a few more-or-less crowd-free pictures. The rooms were beautiful.

On a much smaller scale, so was the tilework.

Although many of the museum rooms of the Topkapi palace were far too mobbed to stay in for long, we found the grounds lovely as well. Here are pictures of a garden detail and of the view across the Bosporus.

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