CROSSING THE GOLDEN HORN

ISTANBUL, Turkey---As our bus rumbled at an elephant's pace across the Galata Bridge into Old Istanbul, I witnessed why the city once called Constantinople has squeezed history and its many cultures into the neck of an hourglass between the continents of Europe and Asia for 2,700 years. The only metropolis in the world to straddle two continents, people, buses, trucks, donkey carts and little Fiat taxi cabs poured like thousands of grains of sand, a few at a time, over the river called the Golden Horn.

Several minutes later, the bus squeezed out of the Mother of Traffic Jams and into a quiet, side street to the entrance of the Armada Hotel, a surprisingly elegant lodging place, with teak carvings and a marble fountain in its dark but attractive Ottoman-style lobby. . . .CONTINUE

© John Hilferty 1997