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 The bridge between Orient and the West since the dawn of time, Turke is a sprawling Country of 780.000 square kilometers, of mountain ranges, high plateaus and verdat river valleys. The Greeks and Romans lefe their imprints on the country which, later, was the seat of the great Byz-antine empire that ruled a millennium. Turkrey thereafter became the home of the powerful Otto-man empire, playing a major role, too in the history of mankind. The sources of the rivers Eu-phrates and Tigris'whose banks have seen the rise and fall of great civilizations over the past five or six millenniums'are in Turkey . The coutry remains a bastion of oriental splendour,of mystery and intrigue, of wqhirling dervishes. Visitors wanting to explore a bit of the past will be over- whelmed with Turkey's ancient sites: baths, colonnaded streets, rock dwellings, forts, castles,
Tombs and temples sprinkled across the country. But modern holiday resirts and splendid beaches stretch along Turkey's 8.000kilometre long coastline. The Turks themselves are noted for being welcoming to foreign visitors, and Turkish cooking is oftena delight with fanciful names for age-old culinary creations. The bazazre are quite often cavernous. With an amazing array of precious object, household goods, domestic paraphernalia and bric-a-brac. Whether for shopping, relaxing or touring, Turkey is an experience that you're most likely to want to return to straddling tow continents, Istanbul also shows dual faces to its visitors: the rich haer es to its visitors: therich haer itage and history which is firmly anchored in the Asian continent and a modern, free- entrerprise out-look emulating its European side. With a population edging on 8 mil-lion, the metropolis seems constantly in motion and never asleep.
From north to south, the bosphorus strait neatly splits the city into Asian and Euro- pean sectors while the mar-mara sea, spreading outbe-fore the fabled Topkapi palace, gives avast opening to Istanbul's southern flank. A rde down the Golden Horn brings one past Indus-trial yards, old quarters and to an historic mosque and graveyard.
After ambling through the seemingly endless bazaare, imbibing the city,s magnify-cent sights and encountering the crowds and traffic on the noisy boulevards, wlat a pleasure to relax on the quay-side or take a boat sputtering over the calm waters away from urbanization. There,s so much to see but if time is lim-ited you must squeeze in the Topkapi, the palace of the great sultans, with its harem its superb collections of porcelain, enviable emeralds and its serene halls. Just taking in the vista of the bosphorus from the sultan's gardens is worth the visit. Aye Sophia is a marvel of architecture, at one time the largest church in the world when the two principal centers of the faith were Rome and Constantinople Is-tanbul's pre-16th century moniker . The mosaics are breathtaking.
Through the the nearby spice market ( called the Egyptian bazaar ), with its pungent and sweet scents, in the square with the New Mosque.
Many love to sip tea in the sultan's house of the monu- mental Ciragan palace, new a grand hotel, which lang- uishes on about 300 metres of the Bosphorus shore. Relics and monuments aside, if you're in a romantic moof, you may want to head for the fishing village of Kanlica, on the Asian shores of the Bosphorus.
Today, the village's Korfez restaurant has become the "in" place for le tout Istanbul where John Kennedy, jr and bride Carolyn were whisked away to during their honey-moon. Form Kanlica, watch
Of the city's hundreds of mosques, the 17th-century blue and 16th-century suley-maniye mosques are not to be missed . Though a bit of amisnomer, the blue Mosque is also a stunning example of classic Islamic architecture.
The covered bazaar is said to have over 4.000 shops, and that ought to be enough to satisfy any inveterate shop- aholic. If that's not enough'you may wany to amble the great ships and tankers slither silently down the Bos- phorus by night with only necklace-like strings of lights silhouetting their hulls.
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