Istanbul

We had an interesting arrival in Istanbul. We were watching out our balcony door and on the TV (bow camera) as we entered the port. We were on the great side of the ship and could see the Blue Mosque, St. Sophia, Topkapi Palace and many other interesting buildings through the morning fog. As we got closer to the pier I thought it looked like we should be turning more to come up alongside the dock (but then what do I know??) Suddenly the Captain came over the speakers “All Personnel, BRACE, BRACE, BRACE”. He had the propellers in full reverse and the bow thruster going… the engines were really roaring and the ship was bouncing and shaking. He got it stopped with only feet to spare! A really great save. He came on the speaker again in a little while and said we had gotten caught in an unpredicted current. All’s well than ends well.

This is one of the ports we have been really looking forward to; we met our friend Kagan who was our guide for 4 days a year and half ago. I had told him we were looking forward to some Turkish coffee so that was our first stop. Then we met his whole family for brunch at a restaurant overlooking the water on the Asian side of the city where they live. We had met Lala, his wife, for only 5 minutes on our previous trip and it was really fun to finally meet his two daughters. We also met her sister- and brother-in-law (Lala’s sister). Sadly we didn’t know about this in advance so we had already eaten breakfast and couldn’t begin to even taste all the wonderful looking foods on the buffet.

After brunch we headed to a shopping mall; no, I haven’t suddenly become a shopper but I wanted to get a special lens for my new camera. But… we couldn’t find a store that carried Sony lenses. We drove through many of the modern neighborhoods - the Asian side is mostly residential. Very lovely homes. Then we headed back across the bridge to the Europe side. We visited a very small church that we hadn’t been to before and took many pictures. Then we wandered down the main shopping street on our way to visit the watch tower. I got my box of Turkish Delight and Jim got the little coffee pot for brewing Turkish coffee. These are all modern shops with very few touristy things, but they are in historic buildings and it is a pedestrian only area so it was a nice walk. At the watch tower the line for the entrance was quite long so I decided that I didn’t want to wait… we would put it on our list for the next visit.
This is a city that is very high on my come back list - maybe even number 1 on the list. It is just fascinating and I want to have a chance to wander around the streets of the old city with no time constraints.

As I think Kagan is the best guide I’ve ever had anywhere I am particularly happy to hear that his business in really doing well. He has expanded and now has a few guides that work for him and owns his own transportation vans of several sizes. This is probably the only city in Europe right now that isn’t impacted by the economy… the prices are still fairly low so it is getting all the business!