The battle for the Gallipoli peninsula involved about a million men on both sides. Half a million Turks fighting half a million mostly British Commonwealth soldiers. The battle of Gallipoli lasted about eight months; about half a million men on both sides were killed or wounded. So now there are Australians, New Zealanders, British, and Turks buried all over the peninsula.
There have been many times many times in our travels when I have been speechless. Looking up at this ceiling in the Blue Mosque of Istanbul is one of them. … Read more
These are the photos from my travel photography exhibit in Minneapolis in 2017. Photos are from 22 different countries.
The cave churches of Cappadocia, Turkey were built and decorated over several centuries. This 13th Century fresco is indicative of the latest and highest state of the art.
It may be a bit of an oversimplification, but you could probably say that Istanbul exists because of the Bosphorus. It was the first thing I wanted to see when we got there. We dropped our bags at the Empress Zoe hotel, and headed right out. We were only a few blocks away, and so our first impressions of Istanbul were those of the strong current flowing from the Black Sea to the Sea of Marmara, the ships lined up waiting for their pilots to take them through the strait, and the lines of fishermen with their lines in dark water.
Cappadocia, In a word: fantastic. In the literal sense. It’s a fantasy land, both in terms of history and landscape. The region is a network of small towns that have one thing in common: the weird geology of the region lent itself over the ages to people digging caves to live in. And so they did.
And, if you look at a map, and know a little of the history of the Christian church, you’ll see that this area also lent itself to becoming a true cradle for the infant church–a cradle which sheltered Christians in these caves for up to fifteen centuries.