Taksim Square

 Another sunny day in Istanbul. Just the Galata Tower and Taksim Square to visit before we head south to Denizli tomorrow .

We hit the pavements early and walked across the Galata bridge, having a quick look at the very busy water traffic and then we  wound our way up the steep laneways to the Tower. 

The Galata Tower is an Istanbul landmark, you can see the tower  from all over. Turns out it's under reconstruction so we couldn't go to the top lookout level. It was built as a watchtower and is now a museum. 

Onwards we plodded up the steep hill to Taksim Square. It is considered the heart of modern Istanbul and has a striking statue honouring  the founding of the Turkish Republic by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk on the 29th of October 1923. Atatürk is seen as a great Turkish hero and is still venerated today for bringing about important social and cultural change, including the opening of Turkey to the West.

An old tramway still operates but good luck trying to hop on the tram, it was way too crowded. 

We stumbled upon the Church of St Antoine.

Pope John XXIII preached here for 10 years while he was the Vatican's ambassador to Turkey before being chosen as pope. He is known as "the Turkish Pope" because of his fluency in Turkish and his love for Turkey and for Istanbul. A statue of him is installed in the church's courtyard.

Fascinated by the city cats and dogs I did a bit of research and found out that Istanbul is home to approx 400,000 to 600,000 stray dogs and cats. The clever cat below had staked out his spot by the washing fountain in a mosque forecourt. Lots of attention from the worshippers and no lack of water 🙂

Vet services for the Istanbul Municipality put out food and water at hundreds of locations around the city, carry out spay-neuter operations, and perform surgeries on injured dogs and cats.

Historical sources from the Ottoman era show that dogs served as guards for neighbourhoods and would bark to alert people when there were fires, which used to happen a lot.

Many citizens view street animals as communally owned rather than traditional strays, and the Turkey has a blanket no-kill, no-capture policy.

After a lot of walking we decided to find a quiet place to have a coffee. Easier said than done in this city of 15.8 million citizens. However walking down a side street we saw a little picture on a wall off a coffee courtyard. It looked perfect.

We had to bend down almost double to get through a little tunnel-like entrance and then voila! An oasis of calm and quiet, perfect!

Coffee and red velvet cake to fortify us for the final leg of our walk to our old town hotel. About 10k's of walking today so the cake didn't touch the sides😁