May 18/19

May 18 watching The Golden Horn. I spent a quiet day doing pretty much what I said in my last post. We are docked in the perfect spot to view Istanbul's Golden Horn which is a confluence of waterways. I spent much of the afternoon up on Lido Deck with a spectacular vista of Topkapi Palace, Haiga Sofia, and the Blue Mosque (seen here left to right), along with the busy water traffic. (And no, I don't know what the big white ship is.) There were ferries of every conceivable size and type -- those for passengers, cars, overnighters to other cities, etc, -- going in every direction at once. It's amazing that they don't crash into each other, but with only one bridge between the European and Asian sides of Istanbul in a city of, I think, 14 million people, the ferries are a total necessity.

This evening Debbie, Dave and Liz, Chris and George, and I all went to one of the ship's "specialty" restaurants, a Teppanyaki place. We had a lovely meal, but of course, no flaming onion volcano since we are on a ship. I have five eye witnesses that I ate more than one bite of  a seaweed salad (very green in color), a whole big slice of carrot (enough garlic butter makes almost anything edible), and more green for dessert which was green tea cake and green tea ice cream (both surprisingly good). I had also had two vegetables for lunch, i.e. french fries with catsup (if the government can count it as a vegetable, so can I).

Also this evening I had an in-depth discussion with Shore Excursions about walking distances past and future, and the lack of adequate information on same. The Holland America system for handling handicapped people on shore excursions is far superior to NCL's, and the information on shore excursions available online at Princess beats 'em both all hollow for being able to make informed decisions.

By bedtime I was feeling a whole lot better although still achy in a few spots. I think I should be okay by tour time tomorrow.

May 19 and I'm pretty well back to "normal," at least MY normal.

Mary, please tell Betty that Izmir is now the third largest city in Turkey! I've sent her a postcard of it. I doubt there is any piece of it that she would recognize from when she lived there.

My tour today went to Ephesus, but it was sort of a drive by photo shoot for both the upper and lower gates. The photo here is of the ruins at the upper gate. for a good photo of the big amphitheater at the lower gate, you can scroll back to my other visit there. There was a longer visit to the Basilica of St. John. We had a very good tour guide who did a lot of educating about both Turkey and Islam. 

The countryside has ranges of high hills or even low mountains that separate very flat valleys. The hillsides remind me very much of the Hill Country region in Texas. They are very rocky with what appears to be limestone, and have an arid-looking cover of scrub and pine trees. The flat valleys are very fertile and are planted with just about every kind of fruit and nut trees and vegetables.

A fair chunk of time, as determined by a poll of those on the tour, was spent at a shop in Kusadasi where we got the usual glass of apple tea and a roll along with a lecture about how Turkish rugs are made an a display of some gorgeous samples of the craft. I have now been to various Turkish ports a total of eight times. For seven of them I managed to resist the salesmanship of the Turkish men. This time I succumbed and bought a rug, but it's a very small one. It's being shipped home, so if you want to see it, you'll have to come visit me.