Istanbul 1

Dear friends and followers,
I haven't been here for a week now because I was away on my school trip to Istanbul and since we returned late on Sunday I have been doing lots of household chores as well as Easter preparations and visits.
So I decided I will start my Istanbul account in parts. I don't know how many parts it will take me and I hope you won't get bored.
Istanbul is a huge city of 17.000.000 people. It is the city I was born in and was obliged to leave in 1969 at the age of three.This was my third time visiting this city and I hope I will go back soon.
This time I was visiting with my school,my 5th and 6th grade students, their parents, and fellow colleagues. Also my hubbie and son came along.
We started early in the morning on Thursday 14th. It takes about ten hours by bus to reach Istanbul with four stops,one outside the town of Xanthi,one at the Greek border,one at the Turkish customs and one in Tekirdag(Raedestos) where we had dinner.
We stayed at Golden Age 1 Hotel at Taxim which is very central  and the Taxim Square has lots to see and do there.After taking our rooms we had a free evening and we spent it with my Turkish friends Aykut and Sehnaz. Aykut and I have known each other since 1991 when I first visited Istanbul with my father.
They took us out and treated us to a lovely dinner at the Ara restaurant.It is a restaurant owned by a famous photographer Ara Guler.
We had fun together and really enjoyed our evening together.
At Tekirdag after the usual kofte(meatball) lunch we had some baklava.

 A view of the town of Tekirdag from the restaurant where we had lunch.

 Flowers.

 At Taxim Square the tram.

 An advertisement made of a huge high heeled shoe.The heel is made of other shoes.This reminded me of a huge lamp covered shoe we had in Thessaloniki at Karydas shoe store.

 There were charcoal chestnut sellers everywhere and I had some tasty chestnuts.

 With Aykut and Sehnaz at Ara restaurant.The table was covered in Ara's photo prints and of course I had to ask for some of them and the waitress kindly provided them.
You can see Ara Guler's photos on his site here.

 I had meatballs with hunkar begendi (eggplant puree).Delicious!I drank a lovely homemade lemon juice.

 After dinner my son had some dessert of course.

 Galatasaray Lisesi (Lyceum) huge gate.

 There are restaurants that make Gozleme(pie) and the makers are sitting on the window showing off their art!

 At Taxim you can find lots of sweet shops.This one sold marvellous ice cream shaped like flowers.

 Sehnaz and I bought some fistik lokum(pistachio sweet delight) from famous Haci Bekir sweet shop.