2010 Istanbul Tulip Festival

The Istanbul Tulip Festival comes to the city once a year during the first two weeks of April. Every year, the city government plants THREE MILLION tulips in various parks in order for them to blossom during the very peak of Spring.

Beth and I decided to spend an afternoon wandering around Emirgan Park looking at the flowers and eating the box of Girl Scout cookies her Mom had brought me from home. 5 steps, bed of flowers, cookie; 10 steps, bed of flowers, 2 cookies.... Thin Mints, one of my staple American foods, and an afternoon of beautiful gardens was the perfect way to take in Turkey's tribute to the tulip. I recently learned that the tulip actually originated in this part of the world, specifically in Turkey and Iran. The tulip has generally not been a flower that I'm immediately drawn to, but after seeing so many of them sprawled out across this park I think I'm beginning to like them more.

In Turkish, tulip means "lale" which I think is pretty word. It just sounds like it should be related to a flower, doesn't it? I just did a quick wiki search and found that "lale" is actually the persian word for tulip and it just happens to be the same in Turkish. We decided to call it a "tulip" after the French word "tulipe" or the Modern Latin word "tulipa"..and Ottoman Turkish called it "tulbend" which means "gauze", and then that for some reason was pulled from the Persian word "dulband" which means turban? I don't know, I'm confused.

At any rate, here are some pictures from the festival - enjoy!