It’s really amazing to me that you can live in the middle of a city hit by major flooding, caused by “the worst rain in 80 years”, and have no idea until friends from the states email you asking if you’re ok. We’re up on a pretty huge hill, so if our neighborhood was to flood, it would likely be the Apocalypse anyway. Still, I take the metro bus (like the green bus covered in water from all the pictures) every day to work and pass right through the area that was hit by flooding and I still barely noticed it. This morning there was a large area of low lying land that looked more like a lake than usual, but it wasn’t anywhere close to the roads. It wasn’t until my trip home when I saw that most of the water had cleared away leaving lots of rubbish and a few passengers pointed and chattered, though what they said I don’t know. Looking at the pictures online, you’d think the whole of Istanbul had been leveled under flood waters, which just goes to show that a photo doesn’t always tell the whole story.

The Conrad Hotel on Victory Day

Apparently, today was a national holiday in Turkey; Victory Day to be precise. It’s a celebration of the Turkish victory over the Greeks at the Battle of Dumlupınar, the last battle fought in the Turkish War of Independence.

Although we did notice the increase in the number of flags around the city in the days prior, we might have overlooked it entirely if the sound of helicopters hadn’t caught Brian’s attention. We went out on the terrace just in time to catch 9 helicopters and the start of a parade of naval vessels down the phosphorus strait. The parade was lead by a naval destroyer, followed by four submarines, four smaller cruisers, four bigger cruisers, and then a host of miscellaneous military boats.

Enjoy the photos from the day!

A Turkish submarine on The Bosphorus

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One thing I really enjoy about Istanbul is the vivid colors, both man made and natural, visible  throughout the city at night. While Seoul was usually awash with neon colors on every street, here in Istanbul the lights vary from harsh neon, to warm and inviting, and back again. Here’s a few of my favorite pictures taken after dark:

A distant mosque at sunset.

A mosque on Barbaros Blvd. as seen from our balcony.

Lanterns for sale in a tea shop in Sultanahmet.

Süleymaniye Mosque at Night

Last December I bought a Nikon D90 as sort of a Christmas present to myself. For a while now I’ve been wanting to try time-lapse photography with it, but so far I haven’t had a good place to leave the camera (and laptop) for an extended period of time. A few days ago we were up on our balcony enjoying the perfect weather and commenting on how clear it was that day, when I realized it would be a perfect time to try it out. I attached the camera to the railing of our balcony and left it for over 9 hours, snapping shots every 10 seconds…. here’s the result: