Saturday, July 23rd.

And here we are at the halfway mark!  The boys have been so busy this week - with  many long days spent researching, debating etc.   After tomorrow - we should be able to get some more sightseeing in together,

I had a chance to stop by the cultural expo yesterday (actually we could see most of it from our hotel window) - what a great event.  Our table was very busy and the guys were great statesman and represented us well!  We were very proud of them! Some teams came in full national dress, which was great to see as well.

Well - i promised i would give an update on how we were faring, dictionary in hand.  I am happy to report that we made it to the princes islands ferry, to the island, back from the island and then back to the hotel all in perfect precision!  We are picking up quite a few words in turkish and have our bearings straight as to the streets and landmarks.  (it also helps to know the names of the sites you wish to visit in Turkish as opposed to the english names that DK publishes in their guidebooks).  Lucky that this is working out for us as english is really not a second, third, fourth or fifth language here at all - as a matter of fact, the concierge sitting at the "guest relations" desk (yes it said that in english) - spoke zero english - the bell captain came to the rescue and helped translate a few things for us.  We are looking forward to our future excursions!


posted by Helen