The Sun Will Come Out Tomorrow... when you go home.

The Islamic calendar worked out very well for lots of 3 day weekends this year, and for UAE National Day, Nate and I decided to try a quick getaway without the kids.  Calista was willing to stay and take care of Will and Finley, so we planned a trip to Istanbul, Turkey.  We planned for rain, since what trip of ours hasn't included that?  The only thing we didn't plan for was for me to come down with a cold/flu the night before we left.  So much for a relaxing child-free getaway to a romantic city.  But I did get about 12 hours of sleep every night...  then bronchitis and laryngitis when we got home, and two more days off of school.  But back to Turkey.

 Street vendors were everywhere, even in the rain, and Nate loves to try new food, so we sampled some sesame bagel things with cheese in the middle (my favorite), roasted chestnuts (the line from the Christmas song has a whole new meaning - they are dry and tasteless, and I didn't smell anything - but my sinuses were pretty plugged up.  Nate wasn't really a fan either though), some creamy hot drink that was delicious, but soooo hot it literally burned all the way down my esophagus, and a kind of cinnamon chocolate bun that looked a lot better than it tasted.

We visited a palace (Topkapi - saw some huge gems, and 3 terracotta soldiers on loan from China), a mosque (Sultanhamet, also known as the Blue Mosque), a museum (Hagia Sofia), some sarcophagi (full of dead sultans and their wives and children - lots of tiny boxes:(, the location of the Hippodrome (kind of like the Roman colosseum) took a rainy cruise down the Bosphorus (waterway that divides the European and Asian sides of Istanbul), and descended into an underground cistern built by the Romans.   We did a little shopping at a bazaar near our hotel, but skipped the Grand Bazaar, and were accosted by multiple carpet sellers and walked across a bridge in the rain (both ways), then up a steep hill to check out the neighborhood, rode an elevator to the top of an ancient tower (talk about an oxymoron), and kept looking at each other saying, "wow, traveling without the kids is so easy!"

 The sun finally made an appearance on Sunday morning before we left, and our taxi got a flat tire on the way to the airport, so that can count as our required trip catastrophe (if you don't include my lovely illness).  It was a quick getaway, so I thought it deserved a quick post - plus I am getting a backlog! Re-order the pictures to match the travelogue, if you will please because switching picture order is beyond my patience level. Sing yourself a little show tune, as the title suggests, and check back soon for more updates.