Istanbul

After an amazing summer we ended it with a week in Istanbul. We were looking forward to the trip for months and were expecting it to be the highlight of our summer. It completely surpassed our expectations. It may have been the most amazing trip I have ever been on. If you ever have the chance to go to Istanbul, go!

One of the many mosques in Istanbul. They are beautiful and are scattered all over the city.

We went out to dinner one night hoping to see some belly dancing. We didn't find any belly dancers, but these performers came along instead. They went to different restuarants, but for a while they sat down right by our table and played two or three songs just for us. It was great!

We were in Istanbul during Ramadan so there were many people gathering around the Blue Mosque and the Hagia Sofia this evening. It was king of crazy with so many people around, but it just added to the excitement.

Heather had to cover her hair and shoulders while we were inside the mosque.



We visited Taksim which is where a lot of the nightlife in Istanbul is. One evening we went to this rooftop bar called 360. From here you could see a lot of the sites in Istanbul while eating snacks and sipping a delicious drink.

This guy made my kebab and that made him my best friend.

Ramadan!

This is a replica of an obelisk that was given to Turkey by Egypt a very, very long time ago. The obelisk itself is a replica, but the base was the original.

We did see a few people sleeping on the street, but there was a rabbit checking out this guy and his stuff. I don't know where a rabbit came from in the middle of Istanbul, but we watched as he stood up and looked inside this man's bag and then hopped over to smell him.

The trams here were very big and very nice, but you really had to watch out because they would run you over!

Several members of my family surprised us by meeting us in Istanbul. They stayed on Prince's Island and we took the ferry to go and meet them.

There were no cars on the island, only horses!

This is what you get when you have no cars and only horses.

This guy had the most amazing moustache. At first, Heather tried to take a candid photo of him, but he noticed her and just gave a big, warm smile as she took this shot of him and his impressive moustache.

Heather and I went biking around the island and found the stables where the horses were kept. The view of the water and Istanbul in the distance were amazing.



We also found a graveyard on our bike ride, but it was locked and we couldn't go inside. Judging from the skull and crossbones, that may have been for the best.


Back in the city we ran across many crumbling, yet beautiful ruins like this.


All of the above pictures were taken by Heather. The ones below are from my camera.

We went on a boat tour of the Bosphorus and got to see many of the sites from the water. It was well worth the price of the ticket, especially since we haggled the price down as you must do with everything in Istanbul.

Just one of the many palaces.

This is the boat group.

And I'm sitting up top. For a long time I was there by myself because no one wanted to join me. Eventually this guy came up and it didn't take long before he went horizontal and fell asleep in the position that you see him. We thought it was cute and charming and we just smiled.

Some kind of shopping/restaurant island?

With a dog that knows how to swim.

Here we are trying a popular local drink called raki. It tastes kind of like licorice, but is very strong. We drank it mixed with an equal amount of water as most people do and it was still very strong, but delicious.

For Heather's birthday we went out to a Japanese restaurant. She was very excited.

Next we went to the French street and had dessert. There was plenty of live music and the desserts were good too.

This was our waiter. All the men in Istanbul loved Heather. Can't say I blame them.

After dessert Heather wanted to go out dancing. We walked around for a while looking for something until we heard some music and followed our ears. It looked like there was nothing even there from the outside, but when we got upstairs this bar was wild and had fantastic music. Heather is really a great dancer.

There are no figs in Ukraine and I was pretty excited about them. This guy was pretty excited about being in our picture. All the people in Istanbul were tons of fun. There were so friendly and were always having a good time.

A shoe shiner napping on the job.


This guy had this sign up as a joke. He was nice enough to hold it up while we took his picture.

This shop had all kinds of amazing instruments.

This is how we ended the trip. The day before we left Heather's appendix decided it wanted to come out. We ended up having to stay another week, first in the hospital and then in the hotel. She was very well taken care of and Peace Corps paid for all expenses.

Wroclaw

I was looking around a little bit and found my pictures of Wroclaw. Even though though this was the first place we went in Poland and they should have been posted first, better late than never.

The city was very beautiful and the buildings were colorful. This was a big change from Ukraine where colors are usually much more dull and buildings are often old and not well taken care of.



It was common in the squares and even along the side streets for buildings to be brightly colored like this.




I don't know how it got there, but that teddy bear was sitting there all by himself as people walked by. Somehow he lost his family, how sad.

There were statues of dwarfs like this all over the city. The dwarfs were originally a symbol of a protest group called the Orange Alternative which protested the communist government. Today the dwarfs commemorate these protests and are a fun tourist attraction. (The dwarf is on the left and my mom is on the right).