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| Recent PHOTOS: Istanbul (Part 1) (850111) | |||
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Recent PHOTOS: Istanbul (Part 1) |
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Posted by WMATAGMOAGH on Fri Oct 30 03:56:28 2009 I finally caught up on a photo queue going back about 3 months to late July/early August. All the photos are on my website, but I'll post some teasers here over the next few days as time permits.Turkey is the second most popular tourist destination for Israelis (the US is the most popular), and a flight from Tel Aviv to Istanbul takes just over 2 hours. Since it is just a hop, skip, and a jump from here to there, I went to Istanbul for about 4 days in early August. It is definitely one of the most interesting places I've traveled to. In terms of its transit, I just stuck to the European side of the city, where there are some very well utilized tram lines, a "light Metro" line, and a more traditional Metro line. There is also a historic tram in one part of town. Finally, there are many buses (I posted those photos in a caption help seeking thread, that can be found here, though I never rode any of them. I'll put some Tram Line T1 photos in this post. T1 is the busiest tram line, running from Zeytinburnu to Kabataş via the center of the city (on the European side of the Bosporus). According to nycsubway.org, ridership on this line is estimated to be almost 200,000 each weekday, and I can attest the line is SRO at nearly all hours (I think I got a seat twice during my entire stay there). The line has a fleet of 55 low floor Bombardier Flexity Swift trams. Interestingly, the tram system is not on the honor system. Each station has turnstiles where one has to instert a token or use their akbil, which is Istanbul's equivalent to a smart card system. And with that, here we go...           This was the best of many attempts to get a photo of a tram in front of the Hagia Sophia, one of Istanbul's best known landmarks:  Coming up in Part 2: Other Istanbul tram lines, the light metro, metro, and Turkish State Railways |
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