The last visit to Istanbul was for my 50 y birthday in April/May 2010. Now I am there again with my daughter - visiting my mother who is living there this winter. The first photo is from the Cihangir street taken from the window of the apartment my mother is renting. We visited the same district several times in May because the Bugday office is nearby.
Istanbul is full of cats and dogs. My daughter always had a bag of cat food with her and she said hello to each cat and dog we met (and that was a lot of stops). These two beautiful shy young dogs lived below Sanatkarlar Park in ruins that seemed to be inhabited by Roma people. The Istanbulites love their cats and in more affluent parts - like Cihangir - they were not particularly hungry as it seemed that each house caretaker would feed the cats on his street. While Turks are not so keen on dogs they seem to be respected and have always been part of Istanbul since Ottoman times. Googling the issue shows that the situation is not without its problems. The Turkish law on stray animals is even revolutionary in completely outlawing euthanasia of unwanted animals. The dogs are caught, vaccinated, sterilized, given medical care to and released to the original place where they were caught and they are also fed. But according to several articles you can find through googling the issue the implementation isn't quite so pretty and there is a lot of work for animal welfare activists. The internet tells a lot about the negative side of the issue while on the streets the situation seemed to be remarkably good. The main problem seemed to be that some of the dogs were very fat, probably because of eating too much bread and too little protein.
We didn't do too much tourist stuff this time. Here we are on our way to the Istanbul Archeological Museum passing the Hagia Sofia Museum. Istanbul Police has some advanced electrical vehicules that you can see here or on the Istiklal Caddesi.
This cat was not strolling the Istanbul streets. She is Sekhmet, wife of Ptah - Lion headed goddess of power.
The courtyard of the Istanbul Archeological Museum has a collection of ancient statues and "old stones". Very interestingly there was now also a exhibition of Turkish ceramic artist Ms Ayfer Karamani which made a very interesting combination of ancient and modern sculpture.
Lugal Dalu, King of Adab.
More from istanbul in my
Smugmug Gallery.
Our Istanbul trip in April/ May 2010.
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