Our Journey Through Turkey

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We are actually in Ucagiz Turkey on the Mediterranean coast and will be on our way to Antalya later today for our last two days in Turkey. We arrived in Turkey on June 9 in Istanbul and spent four days there mainly to pick up Keely but also to tour the city along with Liz's sister, Mary, and her family.

While there we met several of Keely's international friends from countrys all over the world. We also got the tour of her school, Bahcesehir University (sorry, don't know how to add the accents). While there she also got her grades for the semester, which was 3.7 and 3.4 for the year. We are proud of her.

Of course the biggest concern from our friends and relatives was for our safety due to the protesting going on while we were in Istanbul. While we were less than a mile fromm Taksim Square, we never were in any danger. We actually made a couple of treks up to the square just to see wahts up. We found it mostly a big party where the sightseers like us outnumbered the protesters.

Istanbul is really a city that never sleeps. On every small hilly street there is activity everywhere. Istanbul is a beautiful city but old and she looks it in many places. We would encourage any one who wanted to come to do so. My only complaint is the trash that is everywhere. But in most places there seems to be street fairies that came out during the night to clean up the streets.

There is much more I can add about Istanbul but i should move on to the rest of our tri

Right now Liz and I are sitting on the patio overlooking a very beautiful bay on the Mediterranean Sea at the Theimussa pension and with a light breeze to cool us off. Temperature should be around 100 degrees. I wished I had known how beautiful it would be here so we could have aranged an extra day here. I blame the negative reviews on Bookin.com that are totally worng as the reason for just one night here.

Before here we were in Selcuk at the Bella Hotel (another one we would highly recommend) and toured the acient sites of Ephesus. This is a much if you are ever in Turkey! Only down side was the heat even in the morning. We also went to tour the Virgin Mary's house.

That brings us here at the Theimussa Pension and this beautiful view. After Antalya we fly to Milan Italy, pick up a car there and drive over to Croatia to see the place where Liz's mother was born.

Now some more photos!

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