ORHAN PAMUK’S ISTANBUL -- 16

NEW YORK TIMES WORDS/STEVE WRIGHT IMAGES

We continued across the Galata Bridge, the historic epicenter of Istanbul, stopping midway to admire the scene: tourist boats and pleasure craft floated down the Golden Horn, past the mosques of Sultan Ahmet on one side and the steep hills of Cihangir on the other. 

“This was originally a wooden bridge, and when I was growing up you had to pay to cross it,” he said, “but you could also hire row boats. 

I remember my mother taking me across by boat in the 1950s.”

-Joshua Hammer