Travel Weekly contributing editor Felicity Long is traveling in Turkey. Her dispatch follows.
Cruise ships, pleasure boats and ferries bobbing on the calm waters of the Bosphorus -- this was the view from my room at the Ciragan Palace Kempinski that greeted me on my arrival in Istanbul.
There were no signs of unrest. Some cruise lines dropped Turkey from their itineraries following a terrorist attack on the U.S. consulate in Istanbul in August.
That said, I and all of the writers in our group who had been invited to experience the city by the minister of tourism and culture exchanged stories of anxious friends and family worried about our safety.
Not only was nothing amiss, at least in terms of the visitor experience, but the vibe in Istanbul is definitely that of business as usual.
We spent our first full day doing all of the traditional touristy things in Old Town, including the Hagia Sophia, Topkapi Palace and the Grand Bazaar, all of which were mobbed with tourists taking selfies, shopping and enjoying the sun in outdoor cafes.
"I think some of the fear is geographical," said our sightseeing guide, who whipped out his iPad over lunch to show us where Turkey is located in relation to its neighbors, one of which is Syria.
"But Syria is far away from Istanbul, about 12 hours," he said, adding that some international visitors are vague about geography and have a built-in distrust of any country in this region.
Of course, this is not to minimize that regions along the border with Syria have experienced troubling incidents recently, but that unrest seemed worlds away as we sat sipping apple tea outside the gates of the Grand Bazaar, comparing and discussing our purchases.
As to the fact that the country is predominantly Muslim, Westerners are not out of place here, where maybe half of the women wear headscarves on the street and half don't.
And while some North Americans might be staying away, you'd never know it from the huge crowd of guests in fancy evening dress gathered in our lobby, on their way to an evening out on the town. Clearly, if it wasn't a good idea for them to be here, they didn't get the memo.