Many of our readers have been wondering why we aren’t travelling much around Turkey. Our general answer is that we’re both tourists and not-tourists, and we like to get to know one place as well as we can in a few months. And Istanbul is amazing! But in this specific case, we have a really good answer up our sleeves, and it involves multitasking. We recently went to Miniaturk, a park near the water on the north side of the Golden Horn that contains miniature models of all the great sites of Turkey. Sure, we could go see them full-size, but why bother? (Yes, we know why…)
The sites are a great mixture of religious, and secular, from a wide range of time. There’s even an Istanbul section. We loved the fact that they are all jumbled up together; it’s a nice visual reminder of the richness of Turkey’s history.
A few favourites at Miniaturk: Celsus’ library at Ephesus, Atatürk’s mausoleum in Ankara, the Parliament buildings in Ankara, the hot air balloons of Cappadocia, the Konya Allaadin mosque, Süleiman’s mosque, the Maiden’s Castle, the Blue Mosque, Mt. Nemrud, the Izmir clock tower, and a funicular with moving gondolas. The whole thing is pretty spectacular. Especially if you don’t mind kitsch. Luckily, we don’t.
But the very best thing about Miniaturk, aside from the kids running around having the time of their lives, is the fact that – like everywhere in Istanbul – there are cats. Giant cats stalking all over beloved sites, just like they own the place. Maybe they do…
