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Day 8 began bright and early so that we could pack and get ready to head out to Ephesus.  Technically, we were staying in Selçuk, which is about a 20 minute walk from the Ephesus ruins, but it sounds cooler to say we were going to Ephesus.

Larissa and I didn't want to bring our whole suitcase with us, so we borrowed a smaller one from Eric and Hannah-Lee, which they thankfully didn't need to use.  By 9:30am, all five of us (Eric, Hannah-Lee, Latitia, Larissa, and myself) had loaded our luggage into our rented van, and we set off to pick up Lauren and her sister Carmen, who were also accompanying us on our trip (you might remember that Lauren was the one who hosted the Christmas brunch the previous day).  Here are Carmen and Lauren in the back of the van:

 

Our van was not beautiful, but it served us well.  It was actually a cargo van that had had seats installed in the back.  The seats directly behind the driver and passenger were facing backwards, and the seats at the back of the van were set in the normal direction, so that those sitting in the back were looking at each other for the whole trip.  Larissa and I were facing backwards, allowing us to see extremely well where we had come from, but not so well where we were going.  Much like life itself, when you think about it.

The drive to Selçuk is about 10 hours long, give or take time for eating, gas, weather considerations, and bathroom breaks.  10 hours.  That's a long time.

Readers who have been lurking about on this site for a while might remember this post where I talk about being out of sync with the rest of the travelers in a given group.  I find I'm still suffering this particular affliction.  While people are talking together, I want to read.  When I'm reading, people are sleeping.  I try to sleep right before we stop for gas or food.  It's very frustrating.  Actually, reading while others are sleeping is not that bad, come to think of it.

Hannah-Lee also brought her Nintendo DS with her, along with a Super Mario game that I hadn't really played much, so at some point I found a way to weasel an opportunity to play it (probably by "asking" or something).  It was a good other pastime to throw into the "out of sync" mix.  Generally it worked out well, although I felt like I was playing at a higher level of difficulty since the screen was hard to see in direct sunlight (which sometimes, annoyingly, came through the windows of the van), and the turns and bumps sometimes caused me to accidentally hit buttons or just generally lose the rhythm of the level I was trying to accomplish.  This often led to Mario's death, which led to me uttering words of frustration which I thought were spoken under my breath, but would actually be louder than I anticipated.  Then Larissa would elbow me for waking her up.

The was a lot of scenery outside the van (most of which I missed, since I was reading or sleeping or playing video games during the really scenic parts – sync issues).  What I did catch was nice.  A lot of hills and mountains and large elevations of land that are somewhere between hills and mountains.  Much of it was covered in snow, and after I woke up for our first bathroom break, I took this picture of one of those between-hills-and-mountains areas, which was covered in snow:

At one point during the trip, we stopped at Burger King (I'm stretching for material here) and while I can't remember exactly what I ordered, I do remember that I did not order the chocolate soufflé.  Eric was applying peer pressure like a Turkish carpet salesman, but I stuck to my guns and said "I will not be an enabler for your soufflé addiction".  Eric then went on to order one without me, but at least I was guilt free.

After a long time of rotating between reading, sleeping, DS playing, and awkward backseat conversation between us and people we had been thrown into a van with that morning, we arrived at Selçuk.  Selçuk is not a big town, but it has a lot of character:

The "pension" that we stayed at was called the Australia New Zealand Guesthouse, because Australians and Kiwis like to stay there, and because the owners had lived in Australia for several years.  It too was full of character.  This is the front entrance:

And this is what you see after you walk through the door:

If you stand on the stairs near where it says "Teras" in the previous picture and face the entrance, you would see this:

I might not look like it from the photos, but it was cold outside (just under zero celsius), so we were very happy to find that the common area had a stove (wood stove?  coal stove?) which was like sitting next to a small sun, when it got going.  I think I took this next shot as we were waiting to sort out which rooms we were in and stuff.  I should tell you that it was darker in this room than the photo portrays:

The doorway that led to our rooms was a little further down the street from the main entrance to the guesthouse (we had a key for this door, and our individual rooms):

There was a small entrance that lead to four different rooms on the ground level.  Carmen, Lauren, and Latitia shared one room, while the married couples got a room each:

Our room was a good size, with a nice looking bed and our own bathroom.  Here is Larissa on the bed, sitting under our wall-mounted heater:

There wasn't much to do that first night except grab some supper and recover from our 10 hours of driving.  We went to a nearby restaurant that was recommended by the guesthouse staff and enjoyed a lovely meal, during which I helped everyone else finish off their food (you can't bring home leftovers when you don't have a kitchen).  I seriously developed a bottomless stomach in Turkey, but all the walking kept my current belt-notch firmly established.

The next day was the big day to visit the ruins of Ephesus, so we made it an early night, and cranked our bedroom heater to 30.  That might sound like a lot, but the insulation in our room was not 100% effective, and the cold was trying to make up for all the time we avoided it in Qatar.  Still, we were glad to be in Turkey, with more adventure still ahead of us.

Day 7 (Christmas day) in Turkey started with my awakening to the wintry scene you see in the first picture here, which is the view from outside the window of the room that Larissa and I were sleeping in. 

I suppose that technically, my day could have started during one of the several times I awoke during the night to go pee in the bathroom down the hall – I don't know why (perhaps the cold?) but for some reason, while we've been traveling in Turkey, I've been getting up every 2 or 3 hours to use the bathroom.  It's no big deal when you have your own bathroom in a hotel, but when you're staying in someone's home, there are considerations which make nighttime pee breaks much more annoying: The need to be deadly silent, so as to not wake other sleepers, the need to navigate a strange hallway in the dark, since turning on a light could wake others as well, and the question of whether or not to flush the toilet when you're done, since this too can wake others. 

The first time I made the bathroom trek, I was proud to have utilized ninja-like stealth in staying quiet, even when I stubbed my toe on the small step into the bathroom itself.  I also made use of my keen night vision to avoid the clothes-drying rack that was in the hallway which led to the bathroom.  Finally, I decided to postpone flushing the toilet, since (knowing my bladder habits lately) I would likely be visiting the bathroom several more times before anyone else in the house could chance upon a toilet full of festering piss.

Not long after I got up for good, I decided that it might be a good idea to take a few photos of the room we were staying in, so as to give you (my loyal readers) a better reference with which to visualize the content of this post.  Here is our room, seen from the bed where we were sleeping:

You'll notice a large amount of musical and recording equipment in this room.  This is because we were actually staying in the room that Eric and Hannah-Lee use for their amateur music studio (and office).  By standing back where the microphone and headphones are, I took this photo:

Yes, that's Larissa still in bed.  She generally likes to sleep a good hour or two later than I do.  But at this point in the day, she was supposed to be getting up anyway, so I don't feel guilty for having turned on the light.  After waking Larissa (for the 3rd time) with a loving combination of gentle kisses and vigorous shaking, we made a quick Christmas phone call to her family (via Skype), and I decided that it might be a good time to jump in the shower to start to get ready for our day.

I am astounded – ASTOUNDED – by the array of products found in other people's showers.  I'm not speaking only of Hannah-Lee and Eric's shower here, but of the shower facilities of almost every person that I've ever used outside of my own.  My showering needs are simple.  In fact, there are three stages to every shower I have, only two of which require products – There's the "wash hair" stage, the "wash body" stage, and the "stand around under the water while you contemplate life" stage.  Hence, my shower products consist entirely of: one bottle of shampoo, and one bar of soap.

Imagine my confusion when I step into the showers at other people's homes, and am confronted with this:

Clearly there are things that other people are doing in the shower which are completely foreign to me. 

I notice that most of these products seem to be tailored towards women.  There are special shampoos which are for "colour treated hair" or "dry, frizzy hair", there are special conditioners (which I don't use, since my hair is so short), and there are various body washes of different scents or brands.  Perhaps if you shave in the shower, you might have some shaving cream in there too.  But I do not understand how anyone would need more than four bottles of anything in their shower.

I think that most of this craziness comes from the marketing companies who are trying to sell so many hygiene products that have specific uses.  You need to buy something special for black hair, for blonde hair, for naturally blonde hair, for dry skin, oily skin, average skin, skin of various pigmentations, etc. etc.  I'm just waiting until it goes completely out of control, and I find a bottle of "Johnson & Johnson extra strength toe-beside-your-pinky-toe medicated lubricant for Asian-Americans with slightly less-than-average skin dryness: Now specially formulated for webbed-feet!"

I think that most men are probably with me on this one – I'd like to hear any comments from you if you agree.  If I were to open a store that sold personal hygiene products for men, they would be simple and free of variation.  For instance: "Soap – Use this to wash your body", "Shampoo – Like soap, but for your hair", and "Deodorant – Smear this on your armpits each morning to secure your place in civilized North American society".  That way, there's no confusion, and far less clutter.

Needless to say, I made it through my shower without major incident.  There were a few moments of confusion as I was attempting to find shampoo, and the first bottle I picked up was "bubble bath".  The next bottle was "body wash", but on the third bottle I spotted the words "daily" and "shampoo" fairly close to each other.  I guess I could have read more closely to check if it was "daily cat shampoo", but either way, it seemed to get me clean, and I've had no flea problems since my shower.

The first major event of the day was a 10:30am brunch with several of the teachers from the school where Hannah-Lee and Eric work, along with their families.  This was being held at the apartment of one of the teachers, whose name was Lauren.  Hannah-Lee had baked some truly amazing looking (and smelling) cinnamon rolls for the occasion, and I was anxious to see if they tasted as good as they looked.  Larissa and I had a seat in the living room, and started to get to know some of the other guests:

I, however, was extremely distracted by the food, and couldn't help but take a photo of the spread as I tried not to drool:

Among the assortment of choices on the table were a delicious looking sausage, egg, and cheese casserole, and a pot of grits.  I never thought I would find grits in Turkey.

As I waited for the go-ahead to start eating, and during the lulls in conversation, I took the opportunity to take some photos, including this one of the wintertime view from Lauren's apartment.  Is this what you picture when you think of Turkey?:

After an excruciating amount of small talk, it was finally time to eat.  I am pleased to announce that Hannah-Lee's cinnamon rolls were actually better than they looked, and I am ashamed to admit that I easily devoured a full quarter of the total number of rolls on the dish – far more than my fair share.  In my defense, the quality of the rolls demanded nothing less than gluttony as the unavoidable response, and I can now safely say that I understand what it must be like to be addicted to crack, in cinnamon roll form.

After the food was eaten, the songs were sung, and the discussions of travel and cultural oddities concluded, it was time to go back "home", but not before a group photo.  Here is our entire Christmas Day Brunch group squeezed into one photo:

Larissa and I also took advantage of the presence of other people to snag a photo of the two of us together:

And, because Larissa liked the snow so much, we got another shot of us outside:

And since it was photo-taking time, we grabbed this picture of Eric, Hannah-Lee, and their niece Letitia, who was also staying in the apartment with us:

By this point it was early afternoon, and preparations needed to be made for Christmas dinner that evening.  Such preparations necessitated a trip to the grocery store, and since Larissa and I had never visited a Turkish grocery store, we tagged along for the trip.

Something that I believe is unique (and kinda cool) about Turkey is that the government has randomly installed exercise equipment throughout their cities in order to help the elderly stay in shape.  While this is a noble idea, they somehow forgot that, in order to build and maintain muscle tissue, there has to be some resistance involved in the exercise itself.  The equipment that we found is more like playground equipment that LOOKS like it should help you get in shape.  This thing allowed for a walking motion (Larissa demonstrates):

Hannah-Lee is demonstrating something that lets you move in a more skiing-type motion:

Larissa and Eric are demonstrating one of the few machines that might acutally build muscle, as it utilized one's own body weight (a shoulder-press-type machine):

And this is me demonstrating a machine that can only be used to train for turntable DJing at Turkish raves for the elderly:

The grocery store was much the same as grocery stores in Qatar or Canada, mainly with the names of chocolate bars being changed, and a severe lack of cold cereal.  The cereal that we DID find, however, was different somehow from what I was used to seeing back home:

That's right – you can get it in BAGS!  I don't know why, but this fascinated me.  We stocked up on the required items (I tried a Turkish Coca-Cola, which tastes remarkably like the Coke we have elsewhere in the world, although Eric insists that it's better) and headed back to the apartment.

I spent most of the afternoon on the computer, checking my email, uploading photos from the camera, and grumbling about a missed stock opportunity (it's a long story – I'll save it for another post).  At one point Eric came into our room to do some computer stuff of his own, and we ended up having a wonderful "show and tell" session (I love show and tell!) where we played music for each other, especially music recorded by people we know personally.  We ended up getting into a discussion about amateur recording, which I was able to participate in up to a point, after which I told Eric to get in touch with my brother, who has recorded and produced independent CDs for several local Canadian artists.

As supper time approached, we heard a ring at the doorbell, and two more guests joined us for dinner – Seth and Rachel, who were recently traveling with Eric and Hannah-Lee in Southern Asia.  Rachel joined the girls in the kitchen, while Seth and I talked for a surprisingly long time about linguistic topics, such as Turkish grammar, and the wonders of the Arabic alphabet.

Finally, it was time to sit down to our Christmas dinner.  Dinner was ham, which is a real treat for those of us who live in Muslim countries.  Eric had scored this particular ham through a contact at an American military base in Turkey.  Word of advice – if you want to smuggle any kind of forbidden item (especially pork) into a country, use the American military!

Here is a picture of the dinner table right before we sat down:

After dinner we spent some time talking about culture and traveling (which is what the conversation is usually about when it happens between North Americans in a different culture).  Later on, Eric decided to show us the video footage that he had shot of their South Asian trip, since Seth and Rachel had been on that trip, and had yet to see it.  There was a lot of footage of monkeys.

I started to doze off a bit at one point, and realized it was time to go into our bedroom and call my family (via Skype) to wish them a Merry Christmas.  By the time we came back, it was time to open some presents, so I sat down on the couch and watched the gift exchanges happen.  Eric and Hannah-Lee actually had a gift for us – some special tea from Singapore, which Larissa will enjoy more than I will.  We also gave them the gift we had brought from Qatar.  Most of the gift exchanging occurred between Eric, Hannah-Lee, and Letitia, since they are all family.  Here are Letitia and Rachel sitting on one of the couches in the middle of gift time:

As the night grew later, I found myself feeling a little chilly, so Larissa kindly volunteered to let me wear one of her new scarves for warmth:

With my sense of my own masculinity sufficiently diminished, and sleep once again creeping up upon me, we bade goodnight to Seth and Rachel, and got ready for bed.  The next day called for an early start, since it was our day to travel to Ephesus, so I did some light packing, emptied my bladder for the first of many times that night, and let Christmas 2008 drift away on a wave of bedtime slumber.

It's December 26th, and Larissa and I are heading out to Ephesus in a couple hours with a group of 5 other people.  I'm not going to bother lugging my laptop around for the 3 day excursion, so this blog won't be updated until at least December 29th, but probably the 30th.  

In the meantime, if you're feeling like you need a dose of Darren Conley and don't know how to cope, feel free to read some of the previous entries on this site.  Those under the bathroom category can be particularly entertaining.

There's not a whole lot to say about Day 6 for us in Turkey.  On the one hand, it was largely a travel day for us, but on the other hand, it was also Christmas Eve, so I don't think I can just skip over it and say nothing.  I thought that, just to fill up some space, I'd tack on some extra photos from the previous day that didn't make it into the Day 5 post.

First, here's a nice evening shot of Restaurant Street (in case you were wondering what it looks like).  The "Ocean's 7" restaurant that you see in the foreground was one of our more popular choices for evening meals:

I should tell all of you that this street isn't actually called "Restaurant Street" – Larissa and I named it that because it had so many restaurants.  Don't go to Istanbul and ask a local where Restaurant Street is, because they'll think you're crazy.  Then they'll try to sell you a carpet.

This next photo shows the inside of Ocean's 7.  I think that the ceiling decorations were only because it was close to Christmas.  It was just classy enough to have good atmosphere, but still cheap enough for the frugal traveler:

Larissa also wanted to get some night shots of the Blue Mosque and the Hagia Sophia.  Night shots are always tricky, because a camera needs so much light just to capture an image, and nighttime has a reputation for having a serious lack of light (especially compared to daytime).  To compensate, automatic cameras will often take a longer exposure, which leads to blurry shots.  This shot of the Blue Mosque turned out decent enough, although there was a bit of lens flaring, and a blurred tourist making surprise appearances:

I'm much happier with this next shot of the Hagia Sophia.  I should mention, by the way, that the picture above and below were both taken from the exact same spot – I just turned 180 degrees to capture each.  Most of the major tourist sites in the old section of Istanbul are within 15 minutes walking distance of each other:

Getting back to Day 6 itself, we spent the morning eating our breakfast, packing, and working on the blog post for Day 5.  Check out time was 11:30am, but our plane didn't leave for Ankara until 3pm, so we sat around in the hotel lobby reading or using the free internet until our airport shuttle bus came at 12:50.  

The bus was actually a large passenger van, and if any vehicle has "character", this one had it.  The driver had to use the passenger-side door, because his own door wouldn't open.  The van was also missing the outside door handle for the side sliding-door, so the driver had to open the window and open it by reaching his hand inside and using the interior door handle.  And as we left the old part of Istanbul, driving under a low bridge to head toward the highway entrance, we heard the roof of the van gently scrape against the bottom of the bridge.  If the van was an inch higher, it would have been a convertible.

The rest of the van was full of French people, with a couple Australians in the back.  We were taken to the international terminal of the airport where everyone started piling off and grabbing their luggage, but Larissa and I had to tell the driver (who didn't indicate that he knew any English) that we were flying to Ankara, and not internationally.  I think we communicated simply by pointing at the airport and saying "Ankara?"  He motioned that we should get back into the van and said "Domestic!"  Soon, we were dropped off at the proper terminal.

In this part of the world, they do a security check as soon as you step inside the doors of the airport.  I had to take out my laptop from my backpack, empty my pockets of keys and loose change, take off my watch and wedding ring, take off my coat, and finally, take off my belt.  I'm always nervous about taking off my belt, because (a) I actually need it to keep my pants up, and (b) I hate showing off my hairy belly if I have to lift up my shirt to undo it or put it back on.  Luckily I made it through the metal detector without setting it off, and without my pants falling down.

Once on the other side of security, we noticed that there was no lineup for our airline check-in, so we checked our luggage and grabbed our boarding passes with minimal discomfort.  As soon as we came out of the check-in area, we bumped into our friends who we were going to be staying with in Ankara – Hannah-Lee and Eric – who themselves were coming back from a vacation in several Asian countries.  We were all taking the same flight to Ankara, so we went through the second security check (same drill as above, same fear of pants issues), and found a comfortable place to sit and wait for our boarding time.  I snapped this picture of them while we sat and chatted:

This was my first time meeting this couple, while Larissa hadn't seen Hannah-Lee since she was part of Hannah-Lee's wedding party, twelve years ago.  Needless to say there was a bit of awkwardness as we all started talking with each other, but it soon evaporated in those moments of bonding that can only occur between Canadians who are living in foreign countries.  Soon we were on the plane, and I lightly dozed through most of the hour-long flight to Ankara.

I woke up in time to get my complimentary sandwich, eat it, and finish the Sukoku puzzle in the in-flight magazine before we finished taxiing to the terminal.  Once inside the Ankara airport, we followed Hannah-Lee and Eric's lead and hopped on a large bus that would take us from the airport into the city.  Hannah-Lee is fairly fluent in Turkish, so we let her do all the talking and translating.

We were surprised to see all of Ankara covered in snow – in fact, it was still lightly snowing as we sat on the bus.  This was the first time that Larissa and I had seen snow since early 2008 in Canada.  Somehow it already seemed foreign to us, even though it had been less than a year since we last encountered it.  The weather back home in Doha, Qatar, by the way, is 23 degrees and sunny today.

The plan for the evening was not complicated – get settled into the room we were staying in, grab some supper, and get a good night's sleep.  Hannah-Lee and Eric had been traveling for 24 hours straight, so they were already pretty beat.  Our room is cozy, but it has everything we need – a bed and internet access.  I plugged in my computer to make sure everything was working, helped Larissa make up our bed, and did a little work finishing up the Day 5 blog post before getting ready to go to dinner.

We decided to walk to the restaurant we were going to eat at – Like us, H&E don't own a car, and walking is a good idea after spending so much time sitting on planes and busses.  It was around zero degrees outside, which I found rather refreshing, while the girls were vocally outside of their window of comfortability.  Eric and I chatted about our work and backgrounds as we navigated the wet streets down to the Turkish restaurant we were heading for, about 15 minutes from the apartment.

The restaurant looked fancy – too fancy for people who had gotten off a plane recently, and were wearing jeans and sneakers.  But there was a wide mix of people, and we didn't feel that out of place.  What did make Larissa and I feel a little out of place were the menus, which were entirely in Turkish.  We were so used to staying in the touristy parts of Turkey, that we had grown accustomed to seeing English translations everywhere.  Hannah-Lee and Eric offered us some recommendations and translations, and in the end we each ended up with something delicious.

We started out by sharing an order of Turkish bread and hummus.  When the bread came, it was gigantic!  You can see the bowl of hummus on the left side of this photo.  Hopefully you won't miss the bread:

Basically you just rip off a chunk of bread, dip it in the hummus, and eat.  I've had hummus in Qatar and it never really did much for me, but this hummus was much better.  Maybe because it was hot, and in Qatar it's usually served cold.

My meal was a mix of chicken and lamb, covered in cheese and a red sauce, with onions, peppers, and other vegetables thrown into the bowl for good measure.  The sauce made for good dipping with the leftover bread:

Larissa's meal was a bit different – thinly sliced beef over a layer of bread, with another red sauce and some yogurt on the side.  I really liked Larissa's food too, and helped her finish it when she was full:

For some reason I developed a bottomless stomach during this meal – I ended up eating a portion of almost everyone's meals at the table, and still was not stuffed.  Larissa, on the other hand, was groaning with how much she had eaten while we piled into the taxi for the ride home (the girls were not up for walking in the cold again!)

It may not look like a typical Christmas Eve meal, but while most of you were eating turkey dinner, Larissa and I were eating Turkish dinner – in Turkey! – and how many Canadians can say that?

Sleepiness came quickly, and we were all in bed before 10pm.  We said a quick hello to Larissa's family over Skype as we were climbing under the covers, and snuggled under the warm blankets, happy to be enjoying the hospitality of friends in a foreign country.

We started Day 5 in Turkey by being lazy.  We sat around in bed for a while, got a little more active in bed for a while, grabbed some breakfast, took our time getting ready to go out, and finally left the hotel sometime just after 11am.  The plan was to go check out a couple mosques that were supposed to be cool, grab some lunch, and end up at the Turkish bath that we had visited yesterday.

We started out by following the Metro tracks up towards the Grand Bazaar:

But of course we had to stop for a "Take a picture of me" moment.  I don't mind these moments, since the pictures of Larissa always turn out so nicely!  That's the Blue Mosque in the background:

As we were looking at our map and trying to decide which side-street to turn down, a couple of Turkish fellows asked us if we needed any help, and showed us the direction we were supposed to be walking in.  They then started asking about where we were from, and the next thing you know, we're being led off to check out their carpet shop.  Man, those carpet salesmen are smooth!  I told them that we only had until 12 noon to look at their carpets (it was 11:50 at the time) so that we would have an excuse to make a quick exit.

They handed us some tea and started laying out their best wares for us, explaining to us how a "silk on silk" carpet would be "an excellent investment for the future", especially at their prices:

The balding fellow in this next photo told me that "any of these carpets could be sold for $10,000 in America," but he was going to sell me one for only $1800.  I said "Hey, maybe we should start a carpet exporting business – you sell me the carpets for $1800, and I'll sell them in America for $10,000!"  He laughed at my ingenuity, then continued with the sales pitch:

As I looked at my watch and saw that it was now 12:05, I started trying to subtly tug Larissa towards the door.  She started saying to me "You know honey, maybe it would be a good investment for the future…" at which point I said "Alright honey, time to go!"  I thanked the salesmen for their time and tea, and got the heck out of there.  Once we were back on the street, Larissa thanked me for keeping my head, and marveled at her ability to get sucked in by a sales pitch.  I told her "You're the person that salespeople love!"  Of course, it's easy to love Larissa, but the moral of this story is: Don't talk to carpet salesmen!

As we continued on our journey, we found all kinds of crazy specialty stores.  This one sold only fasteners for clothing:

We also saw that Alf had moved to Istanbul and opened a jeans store (I guess this is where old 80's icons go when their careers are over):

I also found the Turkish version of Operation, which is known by a different name here:

The shops were everywhere, along streets that were constantly running uphill or downhill (depending on which direction you were walking):

I even caught a shot of people selling street-shoes near the mosque we were looking for:

When we got to the mosque (called Rüstem PaÅŸa), we found that it was still prayer time, so we waited outside for 5 or 10 minutes.  As long as we were waiting, it seemed like a good time for another picture of Larissa (I also grabbed the shot of the pigeons at the beginning of this post):

The inside of the mosque was not as spectacular as I had expected.  There were some nice tiles and stuff, but like I mentioned in a previous post, Larissa and I aren't really tile people:

The ceiling had a cool design, disrupted only by the dozens of cables coming down which supported the lights:

After seeing Rüstem PaÅŸa, it was time to grab some lunch.  Larissa had a hankering for cheap street food, so we found a small shop that sold these things which looked like pizza.  There were several different kinds, which were mostly combinations of egg, cheese, and meat.  This picture shows a couple of the "egg and meat" options:

This dude makes the pies by hand, and chucks them into the oven where they are baked fresh and served hot:

I had one that was pretty much just cheese and bread, while Larissa had an egg and salami pie.  They cut the pies into strips, and we ate ours in a small room upstairs from the baking area.  This is me trying to look natural while I hold my lunch (I feel much more comfortable behind the camera):

Sharing the small room with us were two Turkish guys who did not speak a single word of English.  We had some very limited conversation with them, which mostly involved them saying something in Turkish at us, Larissa and I trying to repeat it as best we could, and then these two guys laughing at us.  Needless to say, it was not the most enlightening conversation.  But it's still nice to make people laugh:

After lunch, we made our way to the other mosque we wanted to check out, the Süleymaniye Mosque.  Since Larissa was in the mood to try out her photographic skills, I decided to attempt to "not look stupid" for another photo.  After 4 failed attempts, this one turned out to be mildly presentable:

Unfortunately, Süleymaniye was undergoing renovation, so there wasn't much to see except the scaffolding outside:

Beside the mosque, however, was this pretty cool looking graveyard:

In the middle of the graveyard was a tomb for the Sultan who ordered the construction of the nearby mosque in the first place, whose name was (coincidentally) Süleyman.  His tomb was ornately decorated – It was nicer, in fact, than many of the mosques I had seen:

The Sultan himself is buried in the large casket in the centre of the room, while some of his descendants and relatives are buried beside him:

Now that we had had our fill of dead guys, we thought it might be a good time to take a bath.  A Turkish bath.  At the nearby Turkish bathhouse that we had briefly visited the night before:

The first thing you do in the bathhouse is go into a small change room and get nekkid.  Women are provided with a pair of plaid shorts and a bikini top.  Men are provided with a towel.  You can see all three items in this photo:

I'd love to show you what the inside of the bathhouse is like, but for obvious reasons, cameras are not allowed.  What I can do is give you a written description.  (If you want to see pictures of a typical Turkish bathhouse, there's always Google images)

First, this bath house was built by one of the most famous architects of the Ottoman Empire, by the name of Sinan.  The interior of the bath area was pretty much all marble, with channels cut into the floor in different places to let the water drain.  There was a "warm room" where you spend 15 or 20 minutes getting used to the heat, and soon the professional bather-guys come out and show you into the "hot room".

Each person gets their own bather, and our guys were both young, muscular Turkish-looking dudes who were dressed pretty much the same as I was – in a towel.  They sat Larissa and I down near two marble water basins, and turned on some taps to fill them up.  At the same time, they arranged some other bowls and stuff to get ready for the washing.  

When the basins are well-filled, the bather guys start scooping up water in bowls and dumping it over your head.  The water was nice and warm although occasionally they would scoop up some cold water and shock you.  I almost jumped the first time this happened!  Then they take these exfoliating gloves and scrub you all over your back, arms, and legs.  It felt like being rubbed down with sandpaper, but I understand that this is supposed to be good for you.

When you're nice and well-scrubbed, they ask you to hop up onto a long marble table and lay on your stomach.  Then they grab these big sacks which had been soaking in soap, blow air into them so that they inflate, then squeeze out the sacks over top of you, covering you in fluffy soap suds.  After doing this a few times, they start with the massage. 

The massage style is a combination of pushing, rubbing, slapping, and pressing with the fingers.  I heard my back crack a couple times when my dude pushed hard on it, but overall it was relaxing.  They do every part of you except the sexual areas, then ask you to roll over.  Then you get the same treatment on the front side, after you've been re-soaped.  It actually really tickled me when my dude was pressing the muscles above my knees, but I'm happy to say that I made it through the entire experience without becoming aroused in the slightest.

When the massage is done, they sit you down in the same place you got scrubbed, and shampoo your hair, along with a short scalp massage.  Then they soap you up a few more times and dump some more bowls of water over you to get all the soap off.  I felt very clean, and surprisingly unviolated for having had a semi-naked dude touching me more than any man has ever touched me in a bathroom before.

The final stage is to get dried off, and after going into a private room and wrapping some dry towels around us, one of the bather guys wrapped an extra towel or two around our heads.  Larissa loved how I looked in my head-towel, so she took this picture of me when we made it back to our change room:

Before we got changed, however, we spent some time hanging out in the "cold room" (which is actually room-temperature) and drinking apple tea.  Our receptionist friend from the night before came in and talked to us for a while again, and explained to us the history of this bathhouse, and the story of the architect.  Here's a picture of our new friend when he was standing behind his desk:

I thought it might be a good idea to show you, my humble readers, a picture of the lobby itself, so I took a shot for your benefit:

And here's Larissa sitting in the same area where we sat the night before, when we first enjoyed our host's hospitality:

There was this "evil eye" decoration in the middle of the room.  We had seen things like this all over Istanbul, but were not sure of their meaning.  Our new friend explained it to us, but we're still a little hazy on how it all works.  Let's just say that it brings good luck:

As we were waiting for the shuttle bus to arrive and take us back to our hotel, we ended up telling our new friend the story of how Larissa and I met and got together.  As we explained it (and between his fits of laughter), our friend translated our story into Turkish for the benefit of the other employees, who you can see pictured here:

We all had a good laugh about our crazy lives, and before we left, our friend (whose name I still don't actually know, but we have it on a business card somewhere) offered to take a photo of me and Larissa.  It came out a little blurry, but since blurriness can't detract from Larissa's beauty, and since I actually look better when blurry, I decided to post it here:

It was a wonderful way to end our last full day in Istanbul, and we were happy to feel so clean and relaxed.  On top of that, we didn't get charged for all of the apple tea we drank!  It pays to travel with a beautiful wife, I tell ya.

We capped off the evening with a (very spicy) dinner on Restaurant Street, and landed in bed not too long after 10pm, thinking about our wonderful time in Istanbul, and our plane ride the next day to Ankara to visit with Hannah-Lee and Erik.

Since we took so many pictures on Day 4 of our time here in Turkey, I decided to split it up over two posts.  Since most of my readers just look at the pictures anyway, this should make Day 4 a little easier to digest.  For those who do like to read everything, don't forget that every picture on my blog has fun, hidden text that appears when you hover over them, and the same goes for any links.  But enough about the blog, here is the second part of Day 4.

After enjoying our (not so nutritious) treats, we decided to head over to the famous Spice Bazaar.  We're not particularly interested in spices per say, but the pictures we had seen of the bazaar looked very cool, and I was interested in experimenting with some picture-taking myself.  I don't know if there's much of a narrative that I can construct around these photos, but I'll try to provide a little bit of commentary.

First of all, the atmosphere at the Spice Bazaar was much like that of the Grand Bazaar, which we had visited a few days earlier, but we found the salespeople less pushy, and more entertaining.  For instance, these three guys joked around with us for a while without even asking us to come into their store:

The guy on the far left was joking about how I should find myself a few more wives, and how his friend beside him had four wives altogether – One for spring, one for summer, one for autumn, and one for winter (who was a little fatter than the others, so he could cuddle up to her and stay warm!)  Of course, it was all in good fun.  And I scored some brownie points with Larissa when I told them that I had a perfect "all season" wife.

The shopkeepers and their employees came up with some funny and creative ways to make you stop and come into their store.  Many handed out samples of turkish delight, which was very tasty.  One guy said "Hey!  You dropped something!"  When I turned and said "Where?", he pointed along the ground, as if it rolled into his shop.  We laughed about that one.  The guy who you see talking to Larissa in this next photo had a good technique too:

He and his partner would walk up to you and say "STOP!  Don't move!"  Then they'd invite you into their store.  The guy in the photo told us "We have everything in our shop, except customers!"  We actually did end up buying some apple tea from him.  They also sold sponges, which were hanging from the ceiling for some reason:

But I myself was looking at most of the shops in terms of picture taking opportunities.  I did my best to sneak inside and grab quick shots when I could:

The most colourful pictures, of course, are the ones of the spices themselves, especially the brightly coloured Indian Saffron.  Sometimes the spices were displayed in pots:

And sometimes they were displayed as hills or pyramids:

Besides the spices, there were also all kinds of special Turkish treats.  Many of these treats involved stuffed dates or dried fruit:

We even found some "pomegranate viagara" at this place (look on the left side):

There were several kinds of tea available, including "love tea".  Larissa and I stuck with the apple tea, since we have more than enough love already.

There was a good selection of nuts.  You could also buy nuts:

Yeah, I know that was a bad joke.  To distract you from it, I'll show you how I did some experimentation with the depth of focus on my camera:

Here was a selection of some of the dried fruit:

And, of course, there was turkish delight in piles everywhere:

The spice bazaar is also a great place to get a date ("Darren!  Stop!"):

These things looked like they would either be delicious or disgusting.  Somebody told us what they're made of, but I can't remember.  Maybe it was honey?

I caught this guy making a goofy face when I tried to capture a shot of his wares.  You'll see those things I mentioned above hanging up behind him:

If you are suddenly overcome with the urge to explore the Spice Bazaar with cleaner shoes, there was a guy there who had you covered:

This stuff was dried… something.  I think one of the items was pumpkin.  Looked cool though:

And they had other things which I believe were types of dried flowers:

Here's an artistic shot of a sack of… leaves?

At this point in our travels, I decided to throw on the zoom lens and do some experimentation.  Some of the shots didn't turn out too bad.  I have no idea what this stuff is, but it made for a nice photo:

"Viagara" seems to be the magic marketing word right now at the bazaars.  Here was some more stuff that was supposed to "spice up" your love life:

I caught this shot of one of the sponges while Larissa was trying to negotiate a good price for apple tea.  Not long after I took this shot, I stepped in and got us a better price.  Larissa is too nice.

Another shot of someone's nuts (no jokes this time – this is serious photography here):

And, to finish off our pictures of the Spice Bazaar, a close up of those delicious/disgusting treats that I'm so woefully uninformed about:

The last part of our evening was a lot of fun, but unfortunately, I have no photos of it to show you.  The pictures that are going to be posted for Day 5 will relate to this next part of the story though, so you can always flip over to them while you read the end of this post.

When we were finished at the Spice Bazaar, there was one last place that we wanted to check out before we went back to our hotel.  In was in the general area of the Spice Bazaar, but the map we were using was not exactly detailed or to scale, making it a bit of a challenge to locate this place specifically.  Why didn't we get a better map, you ask?  I think the answer to that question involves some combination of cheapness and laziness, but I'm going to make us sound better by saying "We wanted that added sense of adventure that can only be gained by directional ignorance."  Maybe that didn't make us sound better.

The place we were trying to find was a Turkish bathhouse, and the map we were using was the one found on their brochure (which we had snagged from our hotel lobby).  Our wanderings took us through a tangled maze of back-alley street vendors, as well as some truly sketchy-looking neighborhoods, who all seemed to be shutting off the lights to their shops and locking their doors as we walked through.  We knew that the bathhouse was right next to a rather large and famous mosque, so we asked the occasional random stranger where this mosque was, and kept walking until we saw the minarets looming ahead of us.

The bathhouse itself takes some looking-for to actually find.  We walked around the perimeter of the entire mosque before we found the bathhouse entrance.  When we went inside, we found the place to be fairly empty, except for the Turkish guy who was working the reception desk.  We asked him about the prices and the shuttle-bus service which is included in the price of the bathhouse.  He answered our questions about the bath, and then started asking us about ourselves (which is what most people in this part of the world will do, once you start talking to them).

Next thing we know, he has his assistant bring out apple tea for us, and we're sitting in the lobby of the bathhouse chatting away with this guy like we're old friends!  We must have talked for at least 45 minutes, listening to his story about trying to get into Romania to do some volunteer work (the story is too long to recount here, but it was hilarious!) and learning about Turkey and the differences between the tourist places and the real culture. 

Since it was starting to get late, and we still had to figure out how to get back to our hotel from there, we decided to ask for directions so as to not find ourselves in any more dark, scary neighborhoods.  Our new friend told us "Oh, don't worry – the shuttle service is leaving in 15 minutes to pick someone up near your hotel.  We'll just get them to drop you off."  We were extremely grateful, so we had another round of apple tea, told some more stories, and hopped into the minivan, letting our new friend know that we would come back the next day and experience his bathhouse.

When we arrived back at our hotel, we had to admit that our favourite part of the entire day was our time at the bathhouse, sharing tea with a nice Turkish guy who was a stranger when we walked in his door, but who showed us true Istanbul hospitality.

Day 4 in Turkey started out with what we in the blogging world call "not as much rain as yesterday".  It was still wet and cold, however, with temperatures as low as 5 or 6 degrees.  I know it may sound whiny to the poor, snow infested Canadians reading this, but for those of us living in a country where 15 degrees feels chilly, 5 degrees feels freezing.

I realized this morning that I there were several aspects of our days here in Istanbul that were regular features of our experience, but which you, my dedicated readers, had little knowledge of.  One such aspect was our morning breakfasts, which are included in the cost of our hotel stay.  So, for your benefit, on Day 4 of our time here in Turkey, I brought one of our cameras down to the breakfast buffet, and took some pictures to show you:

You should take note in the picture above that there is a mirror against the right-hand wall, making the buffet look much larger than it actually is.  Here is another view of the buffet from the opposite side of the "L".

Larissa is always fairly neat when she eats her breakfast – she has one nicely arranged plate of items, which she finishes completely before grabbing some tea:

I, on the other hand, tend to take several plates of food, without thought for their aesthetic arrangement, and somehow leave a mess of crumbs and cheese bits in front of me.  Generally my breakfasts here have consisted of bread, cheese, some meat (cold cuts), some spring-roll-things with cheese inside them, some chocolate loaf, the occasional egg, the occasional piece of fruit, water to drink, and a bowl of soup as the final course.  I cleared away my mess before the following picture was taken, showing only my soup and my disheveled morning appearance. 

Something else that Larissa and I experience every day, but which has not been mentioned here, are the severely steep staircases.  For some reason Turkey really likes spiral staircases, and the one in our hotel is not actually usable unless you walk on the wide edge of it.  Just look at how steep the hand railing is!  It's practically vertical!

Anyway, after breakfast and our stair-climbing, we got ready to head out and, with a little walking, made it to the entrance to the courtyard of Topkapi Palace:

We saw several "palace cats" as we made our way to the palace grounds and museums.  This one was guarding the entrance to one of the areas where only service vehicles were allowed to go:

This one was making sure that the birds were not misbehaving:

And this one was making sure that nobody used the one ticket booth that was closed:

There were audio guides available that you could use to find out about the various areas of the palace and the palace grounds.  We considered picking up a couple, but ended up deciding against it.  It's more fun just to make up what you think might have happened in each room.  Plus, there were descriptions printing on signs.  I did find it hilarious, however, that you could get audio guides in both "British" and "American".

The grounds themselves were fairly extensive:

Every time we thought we were coming to the end of the property, we came to another gate that opened up to a whole new area:

It was really nice to look at, but I'm sure it would have been even nicer in the spring or summer:

We were not allowed to take pictures of many of the artifacts, but one of the items that we could take pictures of were these "throne covers" that were used to – yes, you guessed it – cover thrones.  This particular cover was itself covered in gold, rubies, diamonds, and other gemstones:

Not long after we saw the throne covers, Larissa had one of her "take a picture of me" moments:

Despite not being allowed to photograph the expensive relics and antiquities, I tried my best to sneakily capture two items that I found incredible.  Neither photo turned out well, since there was not enough light to get a non-blurry photograph (without being seen by security).  The first one was this killer sword that was seriously huge – like, barbarian sized.  It looked like something from an anime cartoon:

The other item that I tried to photograph was this diamond that was – I kid you not – 87 carats!  This one stone alone was worth more than the collective savings of everyone I know combined:

I wish I could have taken pictures of some of the other items that we saw displayed.  There was so much gold, and so many diamonds and jewels, that you can't actually wrap your brain around the value of it all.  You end up just thinking that it all must be fake, because it would be impossible to see so many precious stones all piled into these items.  There were drinking flasks encrusted with gemstones from top to bottom.  Thrones with hundred of real pearls running in patterns all around them.  Pendants and turban decorations with emeralds as big as golf balls, surrounded by diamonds mounted on pure gold.  It was a little sickening, actually.

We also saw a room with "sacred relics" that contained (what was claimed to be) the staff of Moses, the sword of King David, Abraham's drinking bowl, the arm of John the Baptist, and a whole pile of items belonging to the Prophet Muhammad, including several pieces of his beard, a tooth, his sword, his bow and quiver, and some pieces of his clothing. 

Personally, I find it a little hard to believe that they would have the Biblical artifacts that they claim.  Everyone knows that in the middle ages, the only way to get pilgrims (the original tourists) to come to your city was to have fancy churches (or mosques) and artifacts from famous people.  I'm sure many of these items were "discovered" to bump up the Ottoman tourist trade, and not because they were proven genuine.  I'd like to see some dating tests done on them to be sure.  Unfortunately, I cannot show you any photos of these items, since photography was forbidden, and security was strict.

As our tour through the Palace grounds progressed, we came across this golden shelter thing, which was used by the Sultan to break his fast during Ramadan.  We got a stranger to take this slightly-lopsided photo of us:

The insides of the buildings seemed fairly sparsely decorated, although when you have this many buildings at your disposal, you can afford to put as much or as little in them that you please.  This particular building was used to house the Sultan's turbans.  You can see the slots for his turbans in the wall (there were slots like this all around the room):

This next building was a library, I think.  There doesn't seem to be much room for books, but I think that all they had was the Koran, and books relating to the Koran:

We also took a look around some of the Sultan's private chambers.  This was the bath that was shared between the Sultan and his Queen:

And this is where the Sultan took his craps:

I believe this next room was where all the big official Sultan family business took place – weddings, celebrations, maybe some indoor badminton… The throne was placed in this room as well:

This was one of the few rooms that didn't have a sign, but Larissa and I assumed it was the bedroom:

And I believe that these were the quarters for the crown prince (firstborn son of the Sultan):

By the end of our time at Topkapi Palace, Larissa was feeling very cold, and we were both feeling hungry:

So we followed the Metro line down to the area where I mentioned earlier that we had seen new McDonald's menu items, and waffles.  For those of you who have been wondering what the Metro looks like, here is a picture of the train passing us:

Larissa refused to eat anything at McDonald's, but I couldn't help but satisfy my curiosity about the menu items that you can't get outside Turkey.  I bought myself a Kofta Burger, and an order of McDonald's Onion Rings:

The Kofta Burger kinda tasted like sausage, while the onion rings tasted exactly like the onion rings you can buy at Burger King.  Every time I have onion rings, I want them to taste like Harvey's, but they never do.  How I miss you, Harvey's.  I also ordered a Mc Donut, but I ate it before I had the chance to take a picture of it.  I did, however, get a picture of the plastic packaging:

Larissa's meal of choice was the aforementioned waffle, and we found a good looking waffle place just down the street from McD's.  Here is Larissa with her banana, kiwi, nutella, pomogranite, pistachio, hazlenut waffle:

In case you were wanting a close-up view of all of those toppings, here you go:

When we were finished eating, it was time to check out our second major destination for the day – The Spice Bazzar…

Day 3 in Turkey started out with what we in the blogging industry like to call "more rain".  Yes, the rain continued for another day, as rain has been often known to do on people's vacations, but not usually on good vacations.  Does this mean that this vacation has not been good?  No, but it does mean that it could have been better.  And by "better", I mostly mean "less wet".

Early in the day (much earlier than usual), I heard Larissa utter a phrase that seems to come up often in Turkey.  That phrase was "Take a picture of me!"  So I did.  You can see here Larissa showing off one of her stylish new scarves while laying across our hotel bed.

The plan for the day was the check out the Topkapi Palace, which is a fairly short walk from where we're staying.  However, as it turned out, we didn't actually see the palace that day.  What we did see was pretty much everything else around the palace.

Topkapi Palace is surrounded by a park which looked very nice as we walked through it, but which I'm sure looks amazing when it's not raining:

This park had everything.  There was grass, trees, fountains…

Statues of guys with golden knees…

And signs warning you not to hop the fence or you'll get shot:

We were trying to find the entrance to the palace itself, but somehow we ended up walking through many winding paths in the park until we came out on the other side at the entrance to the military base.  Thinking that we must have missed something, we backtracked and ended up at the Islamic Technology Museum.

I would love to show you some pictures from this museum, but unfortunately, cameras were not allowed to be used inside, so all I can do is mention a few of the things we saw.  We saw ancient instruments for doing trigonometry, measuring the alignment and distance of celestial bodies, chemistry apparati, systems for self-powered water lifting machines, ancient weapons (crossbows and catapults, mostly), and a whole whack of stuff we did not understand because the English translations of the descriptions were not quite clear.  It was pretty neat, though.

After discovering the path that lead up to the palace itself, we found ourselves sidetracked by the entrance to the museum of archeology.  Fortunately, I was allowed to take pictures at this museum, so I have some cool shots to show you.

A lot of what we saw in the archeological museum involved big chunks of stone with carvings or writings on them.  There was writing in Egyptian:

Writing in Greek:

Writing in Cuneiform (a form of writing where nail-type tools are pressed into clay):

And writing in languages that are completely unknown to me:

There were also an awful lot of statues.  Some of these statues also had writing on them if you looked very closely:

It amazes me to think that thousands of years ago, somebody was asked to carve this gigantic statue of their king, and that for several hundred years afterward, generations of people in that society walked past it every day, and now here it is sitting in a modern building still being looked at by people from a completely different culture, hundreds of lifetimes removed from the one who first set their chisel to the stone. 

Larissa has a far smaller tolerance for looking at ancient statues and relics than I do, so not long into our time at the museum, she sat down and said those words to me again: "Take a picture of me here!"  So I did.

When we had seen most of the artifacts from the first building of the museum complex, we went back outside to check out what else we could find.  As it turned out, there was a ceramic and tile museum next door:

Larissa somehow found a way to sneak into my picture of the tiled front of this building:

The inside of the building was not that exciting.  For one thing, we're not "tile people".  Secondly, there wasn't a whole lot to it.  If you imagine a bunch of shiny, colourful bowls and tiles, you've pretty much had 90% of the entire ceramic and tile museum experience.

The last part of the archeological museum experience was the huge building which housed most of the major ancient artifacts.  One of the highlights of this part of the museum were the huge sarcophagi from the ancient Greek and Roman cultures:

You don't really get a feel for the size of these puppies from looking at the pictures alone, but seeing one of them behind Larissa (who is 5'9") might give you a better idea of the scale:

This museum was not bad, but didn't really compare to some of the more prestigious museums that I've seen in Western Europe (the Vatican Museum, The Uffici, The Louvre, etc.)  It seemed as though this museum got all of the leftover artifacts that didn't quite measure up to the big-ticket items found elsewhere.  For instance, there were rooms with random chunks of columns and archways laying about:

There was also a large exhibition of artifacts from Troy (from whence we get the Trojan horse story).  There was a model of the Trojan Horse in one of the hallways of the museum, and Larissa convinced me to get in the photo and let her use the camera for a change:

At one point, after we had seen enough pots to cook soup for the entire Trojan army five times over, Larissa decided it was time for another sit-down break, and time for another picture of her:

Toward the end of our time at the museum, we discovered several rooms full of Greek sculpture, which I particularly enjoyed.  I grabbed a shot of this goddess (of fruit and… babies?) extending her free hand out toward Larissa in a gesture of motherly protection.  The folds of her dress looked real enough to… uh… ruffle?

After our museum visits, we were too tired and hungry to get any more touristy, so we found this greasy-spoon-type Turkish restaurant and enjoyed some fast food, Istanbul style!  Larissa had a chicken shwarma plate with rice and vegetables, and I had a chicken shwarma sandwich, with onion rings.  Strangely enough, I had a hard time tasting anything resembling onions when I bit into the onion rings.

Of course, outside the second-story window of the restaurant, there was a "shop cat" enjoying a nap on the ledge:

With our late-lunch inside of us, we headed back to our hotel for an early evening rest, and to have some online church.

I say "online church" because, for the last while (a couple months) we've been doing church by listening to the podcasts of the sermons from The Meeting House while sitting in our apartment.  The plus side is that you can have church in your underwear, and you're never late for the service.  The downside is that it's hard to meet new people, and you have to provide your own worship music and communion elements.  However, it also means that, as long as you have internet access, you can do church while you're traveling. 

Larissa and I had some church time (a little later than usual, since this was Sunday and church day for us is Friday) and spent some time napping and reading to get warmed up from our day's travels.  We then went out for a late supper on Restaurant Street and talked about some of the practical implications of the sermon we heard (which was about money and materialism). 

As usual, our waiter and the other staff made a habit of coming by our table often and chatting with us.  Somehow, (I think because they liked us so much), we ended up getting a free fruit tray sent to our table for dessert!  The fruit was delicious, and the perfect way to end a tasty Turkish meal.  We also had one of the waiters write out some phrases in Turkish that we were trying to learn.  He wrote them on a napkin, and I took a picture of this napkin when we got back to the hotel room:

Note: The third word down means "yes", not "eyes", as it might look like from the picture.  Feel free to try to improve your Turkish by looking at this photo – We try to make this blog both educational and entertaining.

After dinner it was back to the hotel, and off to bed.  We vowed that the next day, we would actually make it to Topkapi Palace, as we had planned.

Rain!  Yes, the start of our second day in Turkey was a wet one, and according to the weather forecast, it won't let up until Christmas (right after we leave Istanbul to go to Ankara).  Outside the door to our balcony (which you see in the picture above), the rain runs off the roof of the hotel and makes dripping noises which sound like the crackling of a fire, if you're not thinking about rain (which is hard to do when it's raining on your vacation!).

Despite the fact that we've spent very little time in our hotel room so far, we've still managed to give it that "well lived-in" look that comes with not caring where you throw your wet clothes:

But no matter – the plan for the day was to visit the Grand Bazaar, and since most of the Grand Bazaar is indoors, the rain would only affect us as we walked there, and not after we arrived.  Part of the problem in walking there, however, was that we only had one (relatively small) umbrella.  So we stopped in at the first variety store we saw and explained with simplified English and hand gestures that we wanted an umbrella.  I was shown several possible options, and when I chose one and asked the price, I was told "Ten lira" (about $7.00 US).

Now, in Turkey, every price is negotiable, and since I'm still trying to sharpen my haggling skills, I thought about how I could make a deal.  It turned out that I also needed to buy a toothbrush, since we only use an electric toothbrush back home, and (unlike Larissa) I couldn't find my "manual" toothbrush from the last time we traveled.  So I found a nice looking toothbrush on the shelf of the store, and asked how much it was.  "Three lira".  "Okay," I said, "How about both the umbrella and the toothbrush for ten lira?"  The shopkeeper reluctantly nodded.

Score one for Darren's haggling skills!  The sense of triumph lasted about 5 seconds until I did the conversion in my head and figured out that I still paid about $7.00 US for a cheap umbrella and a toothbrush, which is not that great a deal at all, when you think about it.  Still, at least I would keep dry(er) now, and my teeth would no longer need to be scraped clean with my fingernail.

Larissa and I knew the general area of the Grand Bazaar, since we had accidentally stumbled into that part of down when we walked in the wrong direction the night before.  Once we got to that area, we followed the signs that said "Grand Bazaar" until we found ourselves standing in the middle of an area that was definitely not the Grand Bazaar.  Undaunted, however, by this setback, I resolved to put into practice those instinctual directional skills that every able-minded member of the male race can summon at time of need, and proceeded to follow the direction of the largest nearby crowd of people, which just happened to take us into the Grand Bazaar:

The Grand Bazaar is huge.  They don't label anything with the word "Grand" unless it's pretty frickin' big (Grand Canyon, Grand Central Station, Grand… Funk Railroad?)  You see a lot of hallways that seem to go on forever, with all kinds of small side-alley hallways that snake off into piles of hidden treasures, or mass-produced crap.

We saw what were practically mountains of wares being offered.  There were trinket stores:

Stores with nothing but copper pots and pans:

Clothing and fabric stores:

Stores with nothing but backgammon and chess boards:

Musical instrument stores:

 

Ceramic stores:

Shisha pipe stores:

 

Handmade jewelry stores (complete with cats):

Gold stores:

Antique stores:

And much, much, MUCH more.

The trick of the Grand Bazaar is to find something worth buying, weasel a free apple tea out of the shop owner as you display your interest, haggle the living crap out of the price, walk away as the owner shouts out lower prices, then come back and accept the cheapest price you heard before you left earshot.  Larissa got roped into a conversation with a jewelry salesman which involved (at one point) about 7 different bracelets being laid across her arm for her to "sample".  

We had no interest in buying any jewelry (since we're still recovering from our carpet purchase) so while we deftly executed the strategy outlined above, we kept walking after the cheapest price was shouted at us.  One particular bracelet that started at 90 Lira (regular 140, according to the shopkeeper) somehow fell to 40 lira as we moved further away from the shop.  

Throughout the Bazaar, you could regularly see people hurriedly moving through the crowds carrying trays of tea and bread (for shop owners?), and occasionally a man or two walking with a gigantic sack on his back:

I have no idea what was in the sack.  Maybe cats?

I had to take a photo of this sign outside an herb/spice shop.  The owner kept trying to get me to come inside, but all I really wanted to capture was this:

One item that Larissa was intent on purchasing while at the Bazaar was a new belly dancing hip-scarf.  She's been borrowing one from a co-worker thus far, and since it would be crazy to not own one at all, purchasing a hip-scarf was a priority this day.  We stopped in at a reputable-looking vendor and asked to see the selection.  I personally liked the red scarfs, but Larissa was leaning more toward green:

The vendor himself, however, was definitely a red scarf kinda guy:

In the end, we compromised and bought a purple one.  It was normally 15 lira, but we talked him down to 12.  We probably still got ripped off, but here's the point: We were ripped off not as badly.

To pass the time in the bazaar while Larissa checked out things she liked, I took to trying on various forms of goofy headgear and asking Larissa to take my picture.  This wrapped-up thing was being sold at the scarf store:

I also found one of those funky Dervish hats:

And this oh-so-Turkish-looking fez:

Many of the shopkeepers would shout things to us as we were walking by.  Most of the time it was to try to get us to come into their shops.  Since I look like I could be from anywhere, it was funny to hear what language they decided to shout to me in.  Often it was Spanish, but I heard some Italian, French, and Turkish as well.  Larissa usually just got compliments, like "Hello Princess!  From which country?" or "Pretty lady want some [whatever he was selling]?"

One guy noticed that I was carrying my camera and simply said "Hey!  You can take my picture!"  So I did.  Larissa got into the photo for good measure.

We came across several Bazaar Cats who were minding various shops.  Most of these cats seemed a little tuckered out with all of their shopkeeping duties.  This cat decided to tan in the golden light of his jewelry shop:

There was a guy who would write out your name in Turkish calligraphy (but using English letters), and Larissa and I decided to get our names done so that we would have something to stick on our door back home in Qatar:

You never know what's going on inside these shops.  I caught this shot of a faceless man serving tea to a business associate inside a shady-looking coin store:

Later, as Larissa was perusing the wares at a scarf shop (not hip-scarves, but the kind that go around your neck), I somehow convinced the shop owner to give us some free apple tea (score!):

As the afternoon grew later, we thought that it might be a good time to grab some food.  We checked out the various options, including this place which provides you with a SACK OF BREAD:

In the end, I came across this scene of delightful-looking meat and decided that we could walk no further without giving them our patronage:

We began our meal with some very tasty lentil soup:

And proceeded to dine upon the deliciously skewered meat which I had seen cooking in the front of the restaurant.  I would have taken a picture of the meat, but I was too busy eating it.

When the meal was done, it was time to leave the Grand Bazaar, so I packed up the camera in anticipation of walking back outside into the rain.  We had no idea how to get home, but that's okay – we had nowhere to be and lots of time not to be there.

We walked aimlessly through what seemed to be an endless maze of back-alley shops and street vendors.  At one point, we found a store that sold only socks, and Larissa decided to pick some up, since she needed warmer foot coverings in this single-digit weather.  She also picked up a pair of 80's style legwarmers, to… well… keep her legs warm.  

After about 20 minutes of follow-the-crowd-style walking, and after asking for directions from 3 different Turkish guys, we finally ended up at the Metro station where we had seen the Dervishes perform the night before.  As long as we were in that area, we thought we'd walk around and check it out a bit, and here's what we found: (1) A waffle place that we didn't eat at, but which Larissa is begging to go back to, (2) a nice view of the Bospherous, and (3) A McDonald's that sells onion rings and donuts!  Larissa might want to go back to that area for the waffles, but I want a Mc Donut.

On our way back to our hotel, as we were following the Metro tracks back to the Hagia Sophia, a carpet store saleman decided to "make friends" with us when we walked past him.  He seemed nice enough so we talked to him for about 10 minutes outside his store.  When he asked us to come in to "have some tea" with him, I told him "No, no!  I know what will happen if we go inside!"  "What do you think will happen?", he asked.  "We'll have some tea, then you'll show us some carpets, and we'll have to disappoint you by saying no!  We already bought some carpets yesterday, and we're not buying any more!"  "No, no," he said, "I just want to share some tea with you!"  "Alright," I said, "We'll have some tea, but that's it."

We came into his store, where he showed us pictures of his family on the wall, and more pictures of satisfied customers from around the world.  We sat down with our tea and talked for about 20 minutes about family, traveling, different cultures, marriage, etc.  Finally, when he started to talk about carpets, I knew the moment of truth was approaching.  He began to show us some of his favourite carpets, and asked us about the carpets we had purchased the night before.  When we described our purchases, he had to admit that we had bought some quality merchandise.

Finally, I heard the start of the sales pitch "If you were to choose any of the carpets I've just shown you to be your third Turkish carpet, which one would it be?"  I told him "Listen, you have many beautiful carpets here, but really, we can't afford to spend any more money on carpets!  I'm already not sure about how I'm going to pay my credit card bill!"  Larissa, who would rather do anything but disappoint or offend someone, started to say to me "You know, maybe we could use a third…" "No honey!" (I whispered forcefully), "We cannot spend more on carpets!  I'm sorry, but you need to be on my side here!"

In the end, we thanked the storekeeper politely for his time and for his tea, but I said to him "Listen, I told you when we came in that we'd be happy to share some tea with you, but that we weren't buying carpets today.  I'm sorry."  We quietly grabbed our bag and umbrellas, and left.  As we were walking up the street, Larissa thanked me for having the guts to stand beside our previous decision.  It's hard to believe that we almost got roped into ANOTHER carpet sale!

We spent most of the early evening back in our hotel room.  I put up the blog post about the previous day, and Larissa read some of her book and had a nap.  I think we showered at some point as well.

There was still the matter of supper to be eaten.  Any tourist attractions that we might want to see were closed by this point, and eating was really the only thing to do.  We didn't feel like eating on "Restaurant Street" near our hotel again, so we thought we'd try out something near the Basilica Cistern.  Larissa was in the mood for pizza.

We ended up eating at the place being represented by the first doorman who spoke to us.  It was a pub-style restaurant, and after we sat down we realized that everything on the menu was three times more expensive than the places on Restaurant Street.  We each looked up from our menus into the face of our spouse and thought "So this is what it's like to get ripped off at a restaurant in Turkey!"  

Although Larissa was the one who felt like pizza, it was me who ordered the calzone, while Larissa had a salad that for some reason came with chicken nuggets on it.  The quality of the food was mediocre, the atmosphere of the pub was slightly oppressive, and it was the first time we've eaten in Turkey without our waiter going out of his way to make friends with us (which really is a nice experience to have in a restaurant).  We vowed to never even look at that place again.

While supper was disappointing, by the time we made it back to our hotel room, we were just thankful to be out of the cold, rainy weather and back in bed with each other.  We drifted off to sleep in the hopes that the next day would be warmer, drier, and free from sales-pitches.

For those of you who might not have been paying attention lately, Larissa and I are on vacation in Turkey for Christmas.  We've finished our first full day playing tourists in Istanbul, and I'm taking advantage of this quiet, rainy morning (while Larissa is still in bed) to write about our adventures yesterday.

We actually left Doha for Turkey two days ago in the mid-afternoon.  The flight was uneventful, although I did get through the first 170 pages of my new book "Next".  The book was good, the flight was good, and the food was actually not bad at all (Eastern-style lamb stew, which I happen to enjoy very much).  Since we arrived in the evening, or first night here in Istanbul was spent eating supper, and going for a quick walk around our hotel.

There is a street very close to our hotel that is lined with restaurants, and every restaurant has an employee who stands out front and tries to make conversation with you as you pass by.  This technique is used by most shopkeepers here.  One such person explained to us that it's not that they're trying to be "pushy", but rather that they try to "make friends" with you, so that you'll enjoy your time in their establishment, and hopefully invite all your friends to come back. 

The first of these doormen that we "made friends with" was very sociable, and very enthusiastic about the quality of food at his restaurant.  He told us "Don't take my word for it – talk to my customers!"  He then proceeded to introduce us to various people eating in the front patio area.  They were all very happy with their meals, and one pair of Australian guys remarked to us "It's definitely better than those dodgy street kebabs we've been eating!"  Larissa and I have been repeating the phrase "dodgy street kebabs" ever since.  You have to say it with the proper Australian accent to get the full effect, with the word "kebabs" rhyming with the phrase "the labs".  

I ended up eating more lamb stew for dinner, which was fine with me!  Our talkative host was also our waiter, and we talked throughout the meal about life in Istanbul, where we were all from, and what words we should learn in Turkish.  We also learned that "Darren" sounds like the Turkish word for "deep", and that Turkish people find my name more difficult to pronounce than Larissa's.  That struck me as odd.  We finished up the night by looking through our brochures and maps to try to put together a plan for the rest of the week.

I woke up yesterday morning just after 6am (which felt like 7am with the time zone change) and decided to take some early morning photos from our balcony, which overlooks the Marmara sea.  I took far too many photos than you, my attentive readers, would find interesting, so I'll just share this cool-looking picture of a ship, along with the photo at the top of this post of the lighthouse nearby.

After a very tasty continental breakfast, we threw on some clothes and headed outside.  Actually, we got dressed before breakfast, now that I think about it.  Either way, we ended up outside.  Here's Larissa looking very cute outside of our hotel entrance:

Our hotel is actually very close to most of the major tourist sites in the old part of Istanbul.  We're within a 10 minutes' walking distance of The Blue Mosque, The Hagia Sophia, The Grand Bazaar, the Hippodrome, and more shopping and restaurants than you can shake a "dodgy street kebab" at.  This is one of the open markets that we walked through on our way to the Blue Mosque:

We've found that many of the shops and tourist sites (who might not be able to pay for their own doorman) seem to acquire smaller, furrier helpers who mind the front of their shops.  We saw dogs and cats all over the city standing guard in front of various establishments.  This was one of the first that we saw:

Another (human) shopkeeper was kind enough to take a photo of Larissa and I while we walked down the street:

And since he had taken our photo, he decided to "make friends" with us.  After chatting about the history of this particular area of the city, he led us into his store, where he sold several types of wares, including these crazy hats:

Larissa and I thought that the hats were actually really cool, although there was little chance that we would wear them ourselves.  I did entertain the idea of seeing if I could import them into Canada and start a one-of-a-kind "Crazy Turkish Hat" store, since I had never seen these anywhere in Canada before.  But that's not something I'm going to worry about right now, since we're not even Canadian residents at the moment!

We walked past the remains of the Hippodrome (the ancient Byzantine racetrack for horses) to take a look at the obelisks that line the park area outside of the Blue Mosque.  This Egyptian obelisk is over 3500 years old, and was transported here from Rome sometime during the height of the Byzantine Empire.

The Blue Mosque (also called the Sultanahmed Cami) was our first major stop for the day.  It is one of the most famous mosques in the world, largely because of its size and beauty:

As we arrived, they began the noon-ish prayer service, so we were not allowed to go inside (unless we converted to Islam).  We decided instead to take a few photos of the courtyard and come back later in the day to check out the interior:

Since we were so close to the other major attraction of the area (a famous church called the "Hagia Sophia") we headed over there and did a thorough inspection.  Here is the outside of the Hagia Sophia:

The inside was gigantic, and in the midst of restoration work.  That's why you see the huge scaffolding apparatus in the middle of the interior:

This church was the centre of Eastern Orthodoxy for many centuries, and was designed (and considered) to be the most magnificent church in all of Christendom for most of the last 1400 years or so.  It was taken over by the Ottomans about 500 years ago, and made into a mosque, which is why there are no statues and very few images to be seen inside.  In the 1930s, it was converted into a museum.  Today, you can see Muslim calligraphy mixed with what remains of the Christian decorations from the 10th and 11th century:

The size of the place was overwhelming:

The Christian imagery takes the form of mosaics, done 1000 years ago, on the walls of some of the higher parts of the church.  This is the most famous mosaic image in the church, and possibly in the entire world:

I spent a lot of time looking up.  Larissa caught me in a moment of artistic and religious contemplation:

After fully exploring every hallway of the Hagia Sofia, we left it and walked back across a park and several tourist traps to the Blue Mosque again:

This time, we arrived between prayer sessions, and had the chance to take some photos inside (with shoes removed and heads covered):

Muslims don't believe in making images of anything (much like Orthodox Jewish belief), so the decorations were all patterns and calligraphy.  Once again, the size was overwhelming, but it was a little distracting to see all of the cables coming down from the ceiling which the lights hang from:

As far as interiors go, I'd have to say that the Hagia Sophia wins over the Blue Mosque, although the exteriors are definitely comparable.

It was mid-afternoon at this point, and Larissa and I had a couple more things that we wanted to do before our evening plans kicked in.  One was to pay a visit to the nearby underground Basilica Cistern.  If you're not sure what a cistern is, the easiest way to think of it is a big, underground room where water is collected and stored.  This cistern was built 1500 years ago, and I thought it was amazing (I really love the idea of secret underground rooms).  Larissa was less impressed, but really likes this picture I took of it:

Toward the back of the cistern, there are two column bases that are carved to look like Medusa heads.  One is upside down, and one is sideways, though nobody is sure why.  Here is Larissa looking away from one of the heads (so she doesn't get turned into stone):

I should note that these cistern pictures, as well as the pictures from Hagia Sophia, make these places look much brighter than than actually are.  I thought of darkening the photos so that y'all could get a more realistic representation, but decided against it for two reasons: (1) You can see more of the details in the pictures this way, and (2) I'm lazy.

When we left the cistern, the plan was to head back to our hotel room, take a quick break to refresh ourselves, and grab some supper before our evening plans.  However, on the way to our hotel we found ourselves on a street we had never been on yet, and weren't sure of the best way back.  A kind stranger spotted our predicament and decided to "make friends" with us.  A short time later, we were being guided into his carpet store.

Before looking at carpets, however, he wanted to show us the view from the top of his building (which he shared with a hotel and restaurant).  The view was, indeed, one of the best that we had the opportunity to see since we arrived in Istanbul.  I captured the first shot of the Blue Mosque that you saw earlier in this post from there.  I also got this shot of Hagia Sophia:

And this picture of a typical market area on the right side of the Hagia Sophia (using my zoom lens!):

When we had spent a good 20 minutes checking out the views and discussing the different buildings and sights that we could see from this rooftop, it was time to go downstairs and look at some carpets.

Somehow we got handed off to our new friend's cousin – a gentleman with long grey hair and a sweater tied around his shoulders (you'll see him in a photo later in this post).  He sat us down and had one of his employees bring us each some "apple tea" (a very common drink here, which tastes like hot apple juice).  We sat on some couches at the far end of a large room with a big open floor and carpets piled up around the entire perimeter.  Two young, silent Turkish guys stood at the back of the room like bodyguards waiting for instructions.

Our salesman started by asking us about ourselves ("So, where are you from?  What do you do?" etc.), and then went on to explain to us the process of carpet making, along diagrams of the different types knots and stitching, and the differences between types of carpet patterns.  He demonstrated how hand-made rugs change colour when you look at them from different angles, and how long it takes to make the various types of carpets by hand.  We saw wool-on-wool rugs, wool-on-cotton rugs, silk rugs, and other kinds which now escape my memory.  [Editor's note: you should be aware that I am using "rug" and "carpet" interchangeably here.]

As he would discuss the different types of rugs, he would issue short, forceful commands to the two young Turkish guys in the back, and they would dig through the piles of carpets at the sides of the room to fetch out the rug that their boss was looking for.  Then they would unroll it and display it nicely on the floor, so that we could compare its texture, thread count, colour, size, and quality to the other rugs being displayed.

After what was, (I speak without exaggeration) 2 hours of looking at carpets, discussing carpets, comparing carpets, stepping on carpets, drinking more apple tea, discussing the size of possible carpet spaces in our apartment, re-thinking our entire interior colour scheme, checking prices, adding discounts, doing currency conversions, hand-wringing, consideration, re-consideration, and finally settling into a semi-comfortable state of brainwashed consumerism (made possible by, we must admit, an expertly executed session of professional salesmanship), we decided to buy two very expensive rugs.  This is going in our living room:

And let me say now – this carpet feels like you're walking on angel wings when you step on it.  It's also replacing the $60 piece of machine-spouted floor covering that litters your pants with synthetic fluff if you can stand to sit on it for more than 5 minutes, and causes fluff balls to develop under your feet whenever you walk on it.  The second carpet we picked up was a "runner" for our hallway:

We liked this one as soon as we saw it, and while it didn't kick our credit card in the nuts quite as badly as the first one, it still will leave a mark on our finances that will not soon be forgotten.

To celebrate the sultan-level commission that our (very competent) salesman was earning from our purchase, he insisted that we sit on one of our new carpets and have our picture taken with him:

Even though we're the ones spending all the money, somehow we ended up smiling much bigger than he is!

It was dark by the time we made it back out onto the street, and after stopping in at our hotel to freshen up a bit, we decided to check out a nearby restaurant where we had "made friends" with another doorman the night before, but had not had the chance to sample the food yet.

We were practically the only people in the entire restaurant, so we had our pick of the seats.  We decided to sit by the window on the second floor:

Larissa particularly enjoyed the lighting:

Since the place was so empty, many of the employees came by our table to talk to us throughout our meal.  We really enjoyed talking to everyone and hearing about where they come from, what Istanbul is like at different times of the year, how they like their jobs, and what they want to do in the future.  We shared words in the different languages we all speak, and tried to improve our Turkish.  Larissa and I have almost learned how to pronounce the words for "Thank you", and the only reason it's sticking at all is because someone told us "It's like you say 'tea', 'sugar', and 'a dream'."  The actual phrase is "TeÅŸekkür ederim".

We needed to finish dinner by 6:45 so that we would have time to make our 10 minute walk to our evening entertainment, which was a Dervish show happening at the main train station.  We had purchased tickets for the show earlier in the day, and we didn't want to miss it.  The show started at 7:30, but we were told to try to be there for 7:00.  But since we spent so much time chatting with the restaurant employees, we didn't make it out of there until 7:05, and to make matters worse, we got mixed up in following the directions to the proper station…

We were told to go to the Blue Mosque and then follow the Metro tracks for two stops, at which point the station would be right in front of us (the Metro is like an above-ground subway train that runs along several major commercial streets).  We did this, only to find that we had gone the wrong direction along the tracks.  By the time we made this discovery, it was 7:25, and we were now 4 Metro stops away from where we had to be.  Quickly, we purchased two tokens for the Metro, hopped on the packed train which had just pulled up to our station, and finally found ourselves at the main train station at 7:35.

The show was happening in a side-room just off the main train platform.  We handed over our tickets and sat down just as the musicians were coming out and taking their seats:

The hats that you see them wearing are special hats worn only by people involved in… uh… Dervish stuff.  The musicians started playing some music which was very beautiful, but which made me extremely sleepy.  It probably didn't help that we had just been running to make it to this place on time, and that we had eaten an extremely large meal immediately beforehand.  I started nodding off even before the dancers had come out.

To keep myself awake, I decided to read the brochure which had been handed to us as we entered the performance.  I honestly can't remember most of what is said, but the gist of it was that the Dervish dancers do their twirling as an act of worship, which represents different stages of growing closer to Allah, and also becoming one with the light, which is all of creation, which is true existence, which is not to exist at all, etc. etc.  It was really New Age sounding stuff, and not fully coherent.  

Now, I had had some experience with whirling Dervishes in Qatar (when we saw one perform at a dinner we attended during Ramadan) so I thought I knew what to expect.  The Dervishes I had seen before were colourful and lively, and full of life and energy.  These guys were the opposite.  The only thing they had in common was the shape of the clothing, and the fact that they spun around.  I hate to say it, but I was hardcore bored.

The dancing was very long and repetitive.  There was little or no variation, both in the movements and in the music.  They spun slower than the other Dervishes I had seen, and were dressed entirely in white.  The parts of the performance that I stayed awake for seemed to drag on for 10 or 15 minutes longer than you thought they should, and when the performance was over, I had no other thought but "I'd really like to curl up on the floor and fall asleep right now."  The rest of the audience must have felt the same way, because even though the room was packed, not a single person clapped or showed any sign of appreciation when the performance was done.  The dancers and musicians left the room, and in the awkward silence that followed, people just sort of got up and sauntered off.  It was… odd.

As we left the train station, we regretted that we had spent money on tickets to something that really was a bit of a waste of time, but we were happy that we were now completely sure of how to get back to our hotel.  We followed the tracks to where this whole evening had started, and when we finally made it to the hotel entrance, this is what we found:

We decided to call him our "welcome cat", and like a "welcome mat", he made no movement whatsoever as we stepped over him into the hotel lobby.  We walked up to our room, climbed into bed, and drank deeply of the sweet sleep that I had craved so much during the performance earlier in the evening.