We’re at a restaurant now, having our last tavuk şiş (chicken kebabs). We’ll get up in the middle of the night and walk one kilometer with our luggage to the palace where we’re meeting our taxi driver at 4 am. Our flight to Paris leaves at 6:25 am. We’re pretty excited but will miss, among…
The Grand Bazaar was built shortly after the Ottoman takeover in the 1450’s and has been added on to and improved over the centuries. With that in mind, I was expecting something distinctly Turkish when we went there on Friday, October 17, but was disappointed to find it was just a pretty but low-end mall…
First, I want to give an update on Jen & Dave who are very grateful for everyone’s thoughts and prayers. Dave is out of ICU but still in the hospital. His kidneys are still not functioning, but he’s feeling a bit better than earlier in the week. We met our tour guide, Safiye, at Sultanahmet…
“Do you need help?” I asked in English. The stooped, old woman, wearing a babushka/hijab and carrying a cane and carpet bag was stopped on the sidewalk a few doors down from my apartment building last week. I’m not sure what I planned to do for her, but I hated to breeze by her. She…
You may recall my photos and story of meeting up with my friend Jen & her husband Dave at Niagara Falls in July. Jen and I met when we both volunteered – answering the phone, checking people in and out – at the Denver Ronald McDonald House years ago. I took Laurel with me to…
Mosques and menemen, parks and a palace, electricity outages and water shutoffs, meeting a friend of a friend on the Asia side…Below are pics from the past nine days (but not the utility outages since a non-running faucet and total darkness don’t make for terribly compelling photos). No photography is allowed inside the palace, a…
We arrived here Wednesday afternoon and walked one kilometer from Dolmabahçe Palace, where the taxi (from the airport) dropped us off, to our apartment. There wasn’t a normal address for the apartment, and the website information said to have the taxi driver call to get directions. I looked at a map and figured we could…
Travels with Charlie and Laurel 