Istanbul Day 2

We spent our second day in Istanbul immersed in the sights of Old Town, specifically within the Sultanahmet district: the Blue Mosque, the Hagia Sofia, the Hippodrome and the Istanbul Archeological Museum. Both the Blue Mosque and the Hagia Sofia are huge, impressive spaces. The Hagia Sofia was originally built as an Eastern Orthodox church by the Holy Roman Emperor Justinian. When the Ottomans conquered Constantinople (Istanbul) in the 15th century they converted it to a mosque and obliterated all vestiges of figurative images. This means all paintings of Christ, the Virgin Mary and the saints were whitewashed over. The Hagia Sofia is now a museum and some of these paintings have been semi-restored, but most have been lost forever.

The weather here has been warm, making the evenings nice and balmy. We had dinner tonight on the upper terrace of a small restaurant overlooking the sea and had our first taste of Turkish pizza, called pide. It was excellent! I don't think this is going to be a calorie-neutral trip. Maybe when we get to Sicily and start riding all those hills, I'll burn some of this off, but for now, I'm going to sample as many different dishes as I can.

Istanbul Day 1

As I've already been scolded by my youngest daughter because I haven't posted anything since we've been here, I thought I'd better get busy and provide an update on our travels and let you all know that we're alive and well.

Surprisingly, given the closure of JFK only hours before, our flights from Portland to New York and then from New York to Istanbul were on time with no delays whatsoever. We arrived in Istanbul @ 9:30 AM Tuesday (11:30 PM Monday PDT) and got to our hotel by 11:00 AM. Our hotel, the Sultanhamet Palace, is practically next door to the Blue Mosque (one of Istanbul's primary sightseeing sights) with a lovely garden courtyard in the front. We have a room with a balcony and views of the Blue Mosque. The only unusual feature of our room is the bathroom/shower fixture (I've included a picture). The first time Rich took a shower, he totally flooded the bathroom! I did a little better, but there was still WAY too much water everywhere. I think we're going to resort to doing it the Turkish way by filling the basin with water and using the silver bowl to pour water over us.

Istanbul's sights and sounds are enchanting and I love the foreigness of the muezzin's call to prayer as it reverberates throughout the city. Our first night's dinner, on the third floor terrace of a small Ottoman restaurant located in the heart of the Sultanhamet (recommended by one of the MANY carpet salesmen in this area) was perfect. We watched the sun set behind the Blue Mosque and listened to Turkish music from the square below.

Pre-Trip Jitters

Well, it's V-1 (Vacation Day -1) and I've decided to post something today rather than 3:00 AM tomorrow morning. We're pretty much ready to go...bags are packed and boarding tickets are printed. We'll go to bed early tonight so we can get up at an unGodly time of the morning to get to the airport by 4:30 AM. The only potential fly in the ointment (and it's a BIG one) is Hurricane Irene, or I should say, the aftermath of Hurricane Irene. We have a non-stop flight from PDX to JFK tomorrow morning and, if you've been following the news, New York airports (including JFK) are currently closed. They're scheduled to open tomorrow afternoon, but there could be LONG flight delays. Hopefully, we'll leave Portland relatively on time and be able to connect through to our outbound flight to Istanbul without any major delays, but there's the possibility we may be spending the night in New York or even at home here in Vancouver. I'll keep you all posted.

Not the best omen for the start of this vacation!