Leaving Paris and "civilization" behind, we flew to Istanbul where, on disembarking, we were surprised by the modernity, cleanliness and relative lack of chaos in the airport. The surprises continued as we climbed into a clean, recent model taxi and were sped along good roads with traffic that was happy to stay within the marked lanes. After experiencing the noise, dirt, smog and utter chaos of Cairo, I had expected Istanbul to be similar, but it was nothing like it. The city, cut in two by the Bosphoros Strait, is quite modern and orderly in comparison to other middle eastern cities that we have visited. Istanbul has been populated for thousands of years and has been the capital of numerous empires throughout its long history. Originally named Byzantium and later Constantinople, capital of the Holy Roman
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