Hello, again, Blogonauts!

Alright, I am a bit behind. I've included a flush of photos as penance.

The source for my seeming silence is .... hmmm ... I have it! ... a combination of jetlag and joie d'vivre! What better excuses can there be?

I mean it ... what better excuse can you apply for me here? While I'm awaiting reasons to justify laziness, I'll slip into something a bit more industriousness

This will therefore be a momentary burst of bloggishness. There are, after all, many varieties of "catch-up."

Now where was I?

Ah, yes: Sunday! Sunday was our first experience of really interacting with the Turks.

In the West (i.e., at home), April 5 was Easter Sunday, and apparently many Istanbullions considered it a holiday in their city, as well. (Easter for the Eastern Orthodox Churches occurs on April 12, so we will miss it altogether.) The crowds were abundant, the queues long, and it took a bit of creative problem solving to avoid interacting with the the teeming Turks solely while waiting along with them.

Our first stop was the Topkapi Palace, home of the Sultans that ruled the Ottoman Empire from 1453 until the close of World War I in 1918. Our English-language audio guide to the palace continued to refer to the Eunuchs who ran the Harem. There was even a tableau depicting the Eunuch.

I guess that if you've grown obsessed with maintaining a genetic lineage (and who hasn't?), then castration of all your male staff becomes a personnel policy. (Salary cuts, at least, land above the belt.)

The audio guides offered some insight into how to interpret the sparsely furnished exhibits. Few of the posted signs were in any language other than Turkish. The Turks LOVE their language so much they prefer that others learn Turkish rather than to offer ready translations, even in tourist sites. Americans have set a bad example for, so I getting a taste of our own medicine is probably deserved. See some of the photos for an intro to our experiences.

Once we exhausted ourselves in the Harem, we wound our way back to the Istanbul Archaeological Museum. Although it is under extensive rennovation, the exhibits were still well presented and interesting. After all, Byzantium, Constantinople, and Istanbul are all the same place. Any city with that many aliases simply HAS to have a colorful past.

Finally, we wound our way to the Gülhane Park, formerly a vast garden for the palace, but now devoted to keeping countless numbers of gardeners employed and busy beyond belief.

Turkey is second only to the Netherlands in the world's production of tulips and other flowering bulbs. This was apparent in the park's already luscious extravaganza of flowers.

We celebrated our first day in Turkey with dinner on the Galata Bridge, which stretches across the Golden Horn, a short tributary of the Bosphorus that separates the old city from the more modern elements of Istanbul. Great seafood! The locals were fishing for it from the bridge above us.

Enjoy the photos. Some of the captions will help make sense of what you see.

More is coming momentarily ... so, I'll blog to you sooner, not later!

Larry