Istanbul

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As the summer approaches, I'm beginning to busily put together plans for the family. Of course, it's plunged me into my photos of last summer's holiday. We spent 4 glorious weeks in Istanbul, with a nice stop on Mykonos on the way home. We chose Istanbul as we wanted our American-raised kids to be exposed to more Islamic culture than they find in the US. We stayed in an awesome apartment with a view of the water that we found on Otalo.com, which search all the vacation rental sites. We've stopped staying in hotels and have rented apartments on our holidays recently - it gives everyone more space, we meet more locals, and it's actually less expensive! We kept everyone happy by setting a limit of one tourist attractions per day, and spent the rest of each day wandering the city, hitting small local shops and taking the (awesome) subway.

It was fascinating to see the range of Islamic culture - from traditional to secular - right next to each other throughout the city. The call to prayers became magical for us to hear throughout the day as we were sitting on cafes, cooling off. Our best holiday yet!

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