So things have been quiet for a very long while whilst I’ve been growing a baby! 15 weeks in I am finally starting to feel more myself so I thought I’d share some snaps from our recent trip to Istanbul. It’s a place that’s been on our list for years and it is truly stunning and otherworldly. It fed my tile and fabric obsessions to beyond brimming and I have come home wide eyed from a smorgasbord of texture and colour.

I put them up as points of design inspiration, we have been planning the division of our garden into two separate components with our lovely neighbours downstairs and I think our half is going to take the beautiful blues of intricate tile work as its first point of design, especially as we are still hording a lovely set of Mediterranean blue tiles from Capri where we got married gifted to us by one of my lovely sisters as a memento of our wedding.

The above images are all from the splendid Topkapi palace, below the now dilapidated old Orient Express terminal.

An assortment of Roman mosaics recovered from an archeological excavation of one of the many underground palaces of Istanbul lost forever beneath the modern bustling city.

The beautiful Blue Mosque:

The awesomeness of the stunning Byzantine church turned Ottoman mosque Haghia Sophia, one of the most exquisite interiors I have ever seen.

And finally an assortment of favorites including the underground water cisterns, the Princes mosque and the Baghdad pavilion at the Topkapi: