On the first day of our tour, Odysseys Unlimited planned a cruise along the Bosphorus. That turned out to be a smart choice as it is only from the water can you truly see how huge Istanbul actually is.
We started from Dolmabahhce (dol-mah-BAH-jay) Palace, the residence of the last sultans, and went north, past the delightful Ortaköye Mosque, built by the same sultan (Abdulmejid I) who built the palace, both completed in around 1856. Then we crossed under the first of three bridges that link the European or west side of Istanbul with the Asian or east side. This bridge is the oldest and southernmost of the three suspension bridges that span the Bosphorus, and was completed in 1973.
The second bridge, called the Fatih Sultan Mehmet Bridge or Sultan Mehmet the Conqueror Bridge was named after Sultan Mehmet II who conquered Istanbul in 1453 at the age of only twenty-one. Unlike his predecessors, Mehmet II appreciated how difficult it was going to be to lay siege and capture Istanbul, and so he made meticulous plans. (It might interest readers to know that Mehmet II grew up with Vlad Dracula in city of Edirne, where the sultans lived before they moved to Istanbul.) This enormous bridge was completed in 1988.
The third bridge, one of the tallest in the world, is located near the entrance to the Black Sea from the Bosphorus Strait. It was completed in 2016.
Like Americans, Turks like things to be on a larger-than-life scale. Apart from the three bridges I’ve mentioned there was also an enormous mosque (the largest in Turkiye) and a huge communications tower. They are the Chamluca Mosque completed in 2019 and the Chamluca Tower completed in 2020. Both are hard to miss.
