Our plane arrived at the Istanbul Atatürk Airport late on Valentine’s Day. The weather was crisp and the taxi line was maddening.

On the first day, we embarked on a food tour across the old city in Istanbul and on the Asia side of the city. Aboard the ferry across the Bosporus River, our boat was trailed by a flock of seagulls , to which we tossed bits of Simit (Turkish bagel).

At night, Istanbul bustles with cafe chatter and the buzz of motorbikes.

And Kedis (cats). There are cats everywhere—but more on that in a later post.

On our second day, we traversed some of Istanbul’s historic buildings including the Hagia Sophia.

The Hagia Sophia may be one of the most beautiful buildings I’ve ever seen.

Around Istanbul, street vendors sell charred corn and walnuts. The corn was great! I never tried the walnuts.

Did I mention there are cats everywhere?

We also visited the Grand Bazaar, a collection of shops that contain gold vendors and people selling knockoff designer clothes. There was little middle ground.

The views at the top of the city are breathtaking. Istanbul is very much and old city learning how to be a new city and nothing makes the point more evident than the architecture.

There’s also a lot of tea. I drank dozens of glasses of the stuff.

By contrast, the Turkish-occupied region of Cyprus was much less developed.

The sovereign side of Cyprus was ripe with graffiti, some simply declaring “Antifa” and other depicting more artful murals.