Allstar Bostanci Prenses Hotel Istanbul

... we wore our brightest whites to dinner before heading to deck 15 for the party! Junction 21 played all the hits, from ABBA to LADY GAGA! We did lots of dancin'! There were streamers and confetti! And Conga lines too! It was a great fun and good opportunity to burn off even more calories!

Tonight as we partied on during the White Hot deck party, the Ruby sailed south down the Aegean coast of Turkey to Kusadasi, a popular ...

... Palace; Tombs of the sultans; the piene lito – where a cable car takes you to the top of a hillside cemetery, from which you can enjoy a drink and the view of the Golden Horn; the Spice Bazaar ), two museums (the Museum of Modern Arts, the Istanbul Archaeology Museum, both are good), and had some relaxing moments (lunch on a roof-top café, dinner in a neighborhood grill house, chatted with our hostess over tea and snacks in her balcony, and on our final day, a visit to ...

... culture or cuisine, everything but girls. Turkey's women must rank among the world's frumpiest. I'm sorry, but somebody needs to say it. This has got to be the fashion joke of history, dour overweight women draped in two-bit gypsy dresses and dowdy sweaters with gaudy head-scarves, colors and patterns mis-matched almost painfully, florals and stripes and paisleys and polka dots all mixed together for negative effect. You've got to work hard to look that ...

... as I get older, I realize I don't need all the **** I have, so I really didn't buy much the whole trip, though the lamps and chandeliers we calling my name. I love the Arabic style. It was a nice relaxing day. The plan for day 3 is to do a walking tour over on the European side and visit Taksim Square. You can see more of my pictures on my flickr page.

... is exactly how I felt by the time I dragged back to the hotel around 5:30. My feet HURT! I really couldn't believe that I was actually abe to fit in all those sights in a single day. Not recommended, by the way, but if you're will to suffer a little physical pain, it's totally doable. Well, there you have it. The conclusion to my weekend in Istanbul. Admit it, you really didn't think you were going to see this before I left for India... More soon from the road. HAPPY THANKSGIVING!! Christine

... their wings while soaring. (It's the vultures who are soaring, not him. I'm not sure if he agrees with my theory that people can achieve flight through meditation, or not. But, he and I are both, against our mom's Catholic hopes, somewhat Buddhist.)

Okay. Back to Turkey. I woke up, in the midst of twelve straight nights of sleeping outside, in my tent near the noisy Turkish-Bulgarian border.

I felt, actually, the same way one often feels ...

I feel like a road warrior today. I woke up at 4:30 again to the muezzin and thought i could fall back asleep easily. I was restless and finally got up around 8 and loafed around until i decided it was time to get ready. I had to plan to be out by 10 because the first hop on hop off (or known as hoho tour) tour was scheduled to leave then. (It took me a while to figure out what hoho stood for - i wasn't sure if they considered hohos a delicacy here or what because I ...

... you're living in a city and in the distance you see your possible invaders, building a fort, which they plan to use to attack the city you live in... Hmmm.. have we ever heard of "pre-emptive strike??". Oh well... I'm not going to question the military strategy back then. The last stop on our Bosphorous cruise was on the Asia side in a little town called Andolu Kavagi. There, a Byzantine fortress - the Genoese Castle stood, as well as current ...

... the largest Christian church in the world. The cathedral is so big that the Statue of Liberty's torch would barely graze the top. Erected over the ashes of two previous churches using dismantled and toppled columns and marble from some of the greatest temples around the empire, the Ayasofya (known in Greek as the Hagia Sophia and in English as St. Sophia, or Church of the Holy Wisdom), was designed to surpass in ...

... lined with kebab (spelt 'kebap' here) restaurants, travel agents, carpet emporiums and other attractions for tourists, one soon loses count of the number of times one is asked "Hello sir, how are you ?". And it's a genuine question. Of course, they would dearly love for you to come in and buy a kebab or a carpet, but if that's out of the question then they will settle for a courteous summary one's current health status. Last night, on our way into a restaurant, a boy excused himself and ...