Istanbul

Every time we travel somewhere I feel like I need to do some background reading about the history of the place.  I want to read about the English monarchy and the Russian Csars and now I definitely want to read about the Byzantine and Ottoman Empires.  A good word for Istanbul is simply "WOW!"  I think we said that quite a bit.

We only had a long weekend there but we squeezed in quite a bit of stuff - some shopping at the Grand Bazaar, site seeing at all the famous locations in the Old City, a Bosphorous cruise, and just exploring all the little streets and observing many of the millions (!) of people who live in the city.

Here is the photo tour!

At the Grand Bazaar - huge indoor shopping

Marcy's purchase at the bazaar

We did lots of walking and saw lots of these small cobblestone streets

 This ice cream man put on quite a show and suckered us in.  He makes a big performance of scooping and serving a cone while slyly serving up the biggest size cone and charging a ridiculous price.  Frank was so mad he dumped his cone back in the bin and refused to pay for it.  He hates this man!

 Istanbul University - I really wanted to go inside!!  Maybe they have a bookstore and we could buy t-shirts and magnets and all that fun stuff we always get when we go visit colleges.  But, alas, it was closed to all but those with university ID.  Not sure why but I feel like I missed out.

More to come.  Now it's time to go purchase appliances and choose knobs for cabinets and select ceiling fans, etc. etc.