Istanbul, Turkey

Our border crossing from Greece into Turkey, and our first few hours in Istanbul had us so nerve-wracked I thought I would not enjoy the stay....but a few days later as I luxuriated in a Turkish bath, life couldn't have gotten much more blissful!!! Crossing from Greece is still like crossing a military zone. You must go through 6 or 7 checkpoints, each one with a bunch of soldiers with machine guns. Each asks for the same passports and car papers. At one point we had to go inside and get visas to which Marshall asked rather sadly "aren't those painful injections?" When we got to the last checkpoint the guard said "there is a problem Lady." Apparantly the guard at checkpoint 3 had stamped all our passports in red, but while that was fine for the boys', mine should have been done in black. I had to backtrack and try to explain the problem to the people at number 3. Anyway, the whole procedure took about 2 hours and completely unnerved the boys. Then we drove into Istanbul, and I had absolutely no idea where I should go, or a decent map, and the traffic was worse, by far, than anything I had yet experienced in Italy or Greece. Finally after 2 hours of harrowing, stressful driving, I pulled over to catch my breathe and compose. I spotted a hotel on a nearby corner and said "I don't care what it costs or looks like, if they have a parking spot we're staying there." As it turned out it was one of those great travel moments. The hotel was clean,, only $60 a night, including breakfast, and within a kilometer of all the main tourist sites. And best of all, the desk clerk asked where my car was, went over, got it, and parked it diagonally infront of the corner of the hotel, where it stayed the next few days! Istanbul was an amazing experience. It is nearly 99 percent muslim, so 5 times a day, at prayer time, loud speakers blare the prayer chants. There are many mosques, which are beautiful, and you can visit if it isn't prayer time and you take your shoes off. There is a wide range of women dressed head to toe in black robes and head coverings, to women and men in very fashionable (and sometimes scanty) western clothing. Everyone smokes, restaurants are thick with it. Food is good, and very cheap. We rented our own boat, with a captain, it looked like the one in "African Queen" and took a couple of hour trip up the river, stopping for lunch on the asian side of the city. The boys enjoyed eating breakfast and dinner in Europe and lunch in Asia! One of the best parts of the whole trip was the Turkish bath, where the attendent scubbed off 5 weeeks of road dirt, pored hot water on me, massaged me with soap, shampoed my hair...ah bliss. The bathhouse we went to was 300 years old with beautiful marble. Even the boys had a bath! So after our most stressful start, we ended up with the most blissful relaxation!

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