2009: Ah, Istanbul! (Turkey)

Originally, Istanbul had been my ultimate destination on this trip. I was going to do a tour of Eastern Europe from north to south, eventually ending up in Istanbul.

Somewhere along the way I got so used to being in Slavic countries that I decided to skip Turkey altogether. Caroline and I had agreed that I would join her and her family wherever they decided to spend their Spring holiday, and I was getting a bit tired of traveling alone, so I decided to head back to Paris and see what she had planned. I had a twinge of regret, though, once I had started to make my way westward again, that I was going to miss Istanbul. I've wanted to see the Hagia Sophia church/mosque for as long as I can remember... decades! That was the point of the trip in the beginning... maybe I should have gone after all. Oh well, I thought, Caroline always plans fun holidays and wherever we end up going, we're going to enjoy it.

But still...

Somewhere along the way, Caroline emailed me to tell me that she and her husband had made up their minds. "Finally," she said, "we decided to go to Istanbul."And here we are - or at least here I am - taking a rest after racing Alison (Caroline's daughter) halfway up to a castle along the Asian shore of the Bosphorus.

We found a great apartment here in the center, not far from the Blue Mosque and with a terrific view of the sea from the terrace.

Like when I was in Vietnam, the President has been following me... first Prague and now Istanbul. Obama's recent visit to Turkey apparently inspired all kinds of optimism. This bank used his face to vouch for their loans.

Alison has a mature palate for her age. Her sister Joanna watches as our waiter flambes Alison's steak.

We went inside the Blue Mosque the next day. Beautiful, but full of tourists and some of them being so disrespectful that we couldn't enjoy being there. In spite of three signs in multiple languages saying that women should cover their heads and men should not enter in shorts, some people went in just however they wanted to. Women would even go in wearing scarves around their necks and not bother to drape them over their heads, which would have been easy enough.

It started me wondering why Western tourists in Asia are so careful to respect the exact same set of rules when entering buddhist temples - no shorts and women cover their heads. If you see people praying, be quiet and avoid getting in their way. Simple requests. And, generally, there are no behavior police who stand at the door to remind people. In a temple, no problem... almost everyone complies without being told twice. But in a mosque, it's more like, "why bother?

When we saw some Germans hop a wooden barrier into the women's prayer area so they could sit in the window and have a rest... and continue sitting there, having a lively conversation, even when about 20 women came in to pray... we were so disgusted we had to leave.

With Caroline along the Bosporus

Caroline and her family