Wednesday: This is museum day! We both got up early and ate a quick breakfast before catching a taxi to the National Archaeological Museum, which was created to hold all the fabulous finds from around the country. Every single item is exquisite and speaks to the breadth of culture of the Greeks. We started with the Cycladic Period ( Truly the National Museum was spectacular. We continued through the Mycenaean Period ( There was even a special exhibit of the finds on the island of Santorini. A village fully evacuated in 1525 BC just prior to the volcano blowing up, leaving behind all their household goods as if it were yesterday. Covered in thick ash until the 1970s it has become quite the find and a great education on the same level as Pompeii or Herculaneum. ... read more

Monday: As mentioned in yesterday’s posting, we arrived on Easter so nothing was open. And it turns out that the government has selected 3 May as the workday holiday tied to Easter. So nothing will be open on Tuesday. No government offices and NO archeological sites! This means our plan of having time in Mycenae, Epidaurus and Napflion are being crunched into one day: Monday 2 May. We are on holiday and prefer to take things slowly with careful, educated steps. So we decided to cancel our visit to Mycenae and focus on Delphi and then return to Athens. It was a sad decision but appropriate considering all the things we want to do in Athens. To get things moving we met our guide for Delphi at 8:30 AM and were up on the hillside and ... read more

Saturday: Sadly we were kept up by a baby crying until 12:30 AM. Sleep was fitful so John got up and went for a sunrise walk down to the ferry terminal at Eminonu. He saw the first cruise ship we have sighted. Our host at the hotel tells us that the norm is two or three ships a day but many of the big cruise lines have cancelled Istanbul as a port-of-call altogether! Shocking. After a warming breakfast and conversation with the hotel’s owner, Mehmet, we rested before meeting friends Aggie and Roger and going to the famous Chora Church with its unsurpassed mosaics. We ogled them for an hour or more, running into Carol, Steve and Connie from the Asian Art Museum. The five of them are on their way tomorrow to Iran for a ... read more

Thursday: John got up early – 5:30 – and went for a walk down to the Eminonu ferry terminal area to take pictures of the sun coming up on the Bosphorus. It was a little like a salmon going upstream as everyone was coming the other way to their work (the Grand Bazaar opens at 8:00 AM). What a glorious day it was, not a cloud in the sky and everything right with our world. Not that everything was right, as there was a bombing on Wednesday in Bursa, about three hours by ferry and car from Istanbul. Sadly the bombing was at their magnificent mosque but only the bomber was killed. John ended up have a couple of interesting conversations with shopkeepers and folks at the hotel about the impact these bombings are having on ... read more

Our Itinerary is set: April 26 – April 27, 2016 – Flight to Istanbul Air: Turkish Air TK0080 from SFO leaves 6:10PM arrives 5:15 PM April 27. Transportation: Car to hotel April 27 - May 1, 2016 - Istanbul Hotel: Magnaura Palace Hotel, Dalbasti Street 13/1, Sultanahmet Istanbul, Turkey 34400 Phone: +90 212 458 8383 May 1 – May 3, 2016 – Delphi, Corinth, Mycenae, Napflion Air: Turkish Air TK1849 leaves 12:55 arrives Eleftherios Venizelos Airport at 2:20 PM. Hotel-Delphi: Nidimos Hotel, Dimou Fragkou 10, Delfi 330 54, Greece Phone:+30 2265 083293 Hotel-Nappfion: Hotel Leto Nuevo, 28, Zygomala street, Ζυγομαλά 28, Nafplion 211 00, Greece Tour: PGT Tour Group, Nikos Loukas (cell 693 2203196 phone +... read more