Turkey Before Thanksgiving

Well, first and foremost, I'm giving up on the "Ari says" bit. I think we all know why. No need to dwell on it, so we'll just get down to business.
Now, you all should know that I recently spent two weeks overseas on an amazing tour of the Holy Lands. I'm going to attempt to give details and recollections, but as it seems that I've left my brain somewhere in Israel, you'll have to bear with me. Our group flew out of New York's JFK airport on Tuesday, November 11th, in the evening and made our first stop in Istanbul, Turkey sometime on Wednesday. We started with 15 people in the group, including Mimi and Papaw (my fantastic grandparents), my Mom and Bill, and Bill's daughter and son-in-law (Jacki and Nick), as well as my Aunt Lori (who happens to be the source of all things bad that I do). There were a few other very nice people with us, including Lori's and my wonderful roommate Pat, who you'll hear more about later. Back to Turkey. We arrived bleary eyed and were hustled off the plane, through customs and the airport, only to be pushed onto our first of many buses. We briefly saw a glimpse of the Walls of Constantinople, and as we were flying past this huge monument of history I realized that our 12 hour stint in Istanbul was going to be entirely too short. We passed the sea of Marmara (which happens to encompass the Princess Islands, just so you know) and arrived at the Palace of Sultans. As you can imagine by the name, this place was amazing. The grounds look like an elaborate college campus and I swore up and down that I wanted to get my next degree there. One of the things that really struck me at the Palace was the different architecture that you could see everywherere. It was obvious that this particular spot had been added to throughout the ages and was just steeped in history (not that I know any of it to tell you). We ate a brief lunch that I barely remember and then it was back to the bus to head to the Blue Mosque (or the Mosque of Ahmet as it is actually called). Words cannot describe the absolute beauty of this place. Not only is it immense in size, but the decoration and ornamentation were just astounding. Alas, my pictures of the inside of the mosque are less than stellar and I'll have to get pics from someone else in the group before I can post that one. After the mosque, we had a brief stint in the Grand Bizarre and Lori and I had our first taste of the craziness that is the tourist traps overseas. There were shops everywhere, selling anything you can think of and each of the shop tenders had a lovely compliment for you, just to entice you into their store. Craziness. I can't even explain the immensity of the bizarre, except that to relate that when I thought Mom was lost inside and alone, I firmly and literally dove back in to save her. Yeah, I'm a big hero. After the bizarre, our guide took us to a rug store. I know, it sounds boring, but it was very informative, and a bit tempting. The rugs were absolutely gorgeous and hard to resist. I almost picked one and then realized that it was a bit early in the trip to buy my "big thing" so I held off, but with much difficulty. After what was a very full 12 hours, we were shipped back to the airport to await our flight to Cairo. Amazingly enough, it was just a fluke that we got to visit Istanbul at all, and only because our layover was so long. We all grabbed some dinner, wandered around the airport and then settled in for our short flight into Egypt. I have to say that I certainly want to go back to Turkey, especially Istanbul, and get a better feel for everything that we missed. 12 hours was not nearly long enough to explore this gorgeous country. Tomorrow, Cairo. Stay tuned.