so magnicifent

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This post is about a 21km walk from Büyükcekmece to Kumburgaz. I cross the historic Kanuni Sultan Suleiman Bridge and see a nice sunset.

This part of The Longest Way seems to be all about bridges. There was one more of them to cross on my way out of Istanbul, and I dreaded it. On the map it looked like a narrow strip of land with a highway on it, much like the one leading to Avcilar. Luckily there seemed to be a way around, though. And what a magnicifent way it turned out to be!

the bridge

I crossed the highway in an underpass, then I walked through some residential areas until I arrived at a park. There were a bunch of angry dogs, but it was okay. I had my stick and my enthusiasm, and I was walking towards a very old bridge.

The bridge was called the Kanuni Sultan Suleiman Bridge. One of the greatest architects of his time, Mimar Sinan, had built it almost five centuries earlier. Of course it didn’t bear his name, though. It carried that of the gentleman who had paid for it, Suleiman the Magnificent, and, just like Suleiman, it was magnicifent.

I ended up spending a few hours on that bridge. It was cold but quiet and peaceful. The bridge went up and down in long arches, there were flocks of seagulls on the water, and I marvelled at the sheer weight of history that this structure had carried in its lifetime. It reminded me of my second day of walking back in 2007, when I had just left my home in Beijing and reached the Marco Polo Bridge.

rosy Uzbeks

The rest of the way from Büyükcekmece to Kumburgaz was mainly just a long stretch of highway. Sometimes I managed to leave the busy roads for a while and walk along the coast, but mostly it was just cars, cars, cars, and more cars.

And then, suddenly, the clouds and the sun made a move, and everything changed. A golden light came down and covered the ugliness around me. When I noticed an opening to the sea I made a dash for it, and I ran into a perfectly pink sunset and a group of Uzbek teenagers whose families had come to live here.

Samarkand! I told them, Bukhara! The sunset! It was all so magnicifent!

pictures

I called this dog John Candy because he was fat and likeable:

Self portrait on the Kanuni Sultan Suleiman Bridge:

Some of the arches:

Poster of a camera taking a picture of a sunset in front of some buildings:

The road to walk from Büyükcekmece to Kumburgaz:

Car window:

Pedestrian crossing:

A building that wasn’t ugly:

Roadside doggo:

The golden light:

Sunset near Kumburgaz:

Pink sunset:

Little Uzbek dudes: