Athens- August 1997

We stayed in the tiny town of Nafplion and took a day trip into Athens (highly recommended). We were shocked by the pollution and general tourist-iness of Athens, even though we were coming from Rome. You can see the haze over the city in some of these photos. All of them are from the Acropolis. I usually refrain from posting photos of us, but I figure even if you could see us in this tiny shot, this was more than a decade ago! Apologies for the poor framing job as it was taken by a random tourist passing by at the time. We had hoped to be able to return for our 10th dating anniversary but we were in Thailand at the time and couldn't afford it. Oh well. Maybe for our 11th...

Istanbul, Turkey- Jan 2005

So this qualifies as a very very outdated post. I'm somewhere with a flatbed scanner and a lot of time on my hands. So I thought now would be a good time to do some back-posting. My husband and I went to Turkey in the off season. Which explains the grey skies you see in these photos. It was very cold and (despite our big plans) we were never able to get outside Istanbul because of the weather. My husband had spent a month there back in July 2001 and he is still dying to take me back and show me all the parts of Turkey I missed. It was a great trip, although I recommend packing very warm clothes if you go in the winter like we did.
We stayed in a lovely little place called The SiDE Hotel/Pension with very simple rooms in a great location. Some things we saw and can recommend in Istanbul include:

• Aya Sophia (photo above)
• Grand Bazaar. We had a friend of a friend who helped us select a lovely wool carpet.
• Blue Mosque/Sultan Ahmed
• Hagia Irene
• Basilica Cistern (photo above)
• Suleymaniye Mosque
• Istiklal Avenue, and
• just walking the streets...

Turkey Jan 2005- photos