20th Anniversary Dream Trip Contest

Great Travel Moment

Istanbul is a city– split in half by the Bosporus waterway– that literally straddles the“line” diving, and linking, Asia and Europe. Similarly, this huge city of 12 million is locked in an ongoing struggle to find ways to link the seemingly opposing forces that threaten its future: traditional and contemporary, conservative and progressive, past and present, old and new. This serene image of Istanbul’s mosque-dotted skyline and a docked jumbo cruise ship hued by the setting sun– nabbed during an afternoon cruise up and down the Bosporus in early November– seems to depict the Turkish culture’s dual desires to honor its Muslim history and traditions while seeking to take a formal place among the thriving nation-states comprising the economically powerful European Union. I found the old and new both alive and well in Istanbul today, living together in a shaky peace.