Rumeli Hisari

The kids had a week off of school for fall break, so we drove over to Istanbul. We have some friends that we met in our ward in Falls Church that live there, and we stayed with them. The first day we went to Rumeli Hisari. It is a fortress that was built at the narrowest part of the Bosphorus in 1452. The whole thing was completed in just over 4 months. The craziest part is that we were able to climb up onto the ramparts. They don't have guardrails anywhere! We had amazing views of the Bosphorus and Asia. You can read more about it here. After we finished up there, we walked along the sea wall to go to get hamburgers at a Turkish burger place. They were SO good!!! Along the way we saw a cemetery outside the fortress walls, and beautiful waterfront mansions on the Asian side.  It rained off and on in the afternoon, but it was a beautiful, FUN day!!!

The entrance.



Door at the gate we entered.



The open gate.



The outside of the tower.

The inside of the tower.



Stairs in the tower leading to floors that no longer exist.
(We couldn't go up there.)



Stairs in the tower headed down.
(We couldn't go there, either.)



Aubree on the rampart.



View across the inside.  We climbed all over!



The Bosphorus and Asia are behind us.



We showed the stairs who was boss!

 

Me and Aubree up on a wall.



Chis in the amphitheater.



This tunnel led to a big area under the amphitheater.



The cavern-y area under the amphitheater.

Mike and Nick up on a wall.



Now we're on the wall, and they are not.

Some of the stairs we climbed.



More stairs.



This is one of the treads on the stairs shown above.
(I thought it was pretty cool.)



Chris headed down these stairs.  It was a little scary at times, because some of the stairs were as tall as his knees, and most the time there was a drop of a couple stories on one side.



There were cannon everywhere!



More cannon!



A smaller gate, maybe for just people?

A much bigger gate is off to the right.



The bigger gate at the top of the fortress.



I'm thinking they used this as defense.  It was above the bigger gate.
(The stairs with the cool step led up to this.)



I liked this design on the outside of the tower.

Cemetery with Rumeli Hisari in the background.

Jellyfish in the Bosphorus!



Waterfront property on the Asian side!