Just a quick one tonight. Arrived in Istanbul at 4 p.m. after a day pretty much sitting around. I don’t know how I still got 10K steps in but I did. We went out for a sunset boat ride. Maybe 20 people on the boat, took us up and down the Bosphorus which is the channel between Istanbul, Turkey, Europe and Istanbul, Turkey, Asia. It connects the Black Sea and the Sea of Marmara (which leads to the Aegean and then the Mediterranean. My geography is really experiencing some enlightenment even if my grasp of history is not. Lots of mosques, lots of Ottoman sultan leftover buildings including palaces, summer homes and fortresses, three bridges between the continents and we went under two of them. First we went down the Europe side and went towards the Sea of Marmara (where we entered earlier in the day) and then turned around and went up the Asia side to the entrance of the Black Sea just after the sun went down and kept sailing until the lights just started to come on in the city. Got a nice shot of our cruise ship at night which we don’t usually get to see. Some photos of stuff for you, including the Galeta Tower where some guy (ok I looked it up – Hezarafen Ahmed Celebi) put on some glider wings in 1632. He jumped off the tower and glided 2 miles across the Bosphorus for the first intercontinental flight.

Tomorrow is the tromping around looking at stuff day and once again trying to grasp history.

PS There are some photos of a wedding venue at some old palace that’s now a five star hotel. Wish I’d gotten photos of the guests – looked like Oscars night. Just got a few shots of the fancy dancy setup. It is Saturday night and there were weddings all along the Bosphorus in various venues, none as fancy as the first one but still pretty fun.

Still having trouble loading up videos. Contacted WordPress who was able to do it from their end and suggested I try a different browser or wait til I get more stable internet. I’ll keep plugging’ away at it. Maybe wait til I get home and then video bomb a final post.