Turkey posts finally

It's been along time but finally I have some but not all our pictures from Turkey. I'll try to highlight the trip each week. As I was going back and looking at the pictures I was just reminded yet again of what an awesome trip it was.


Here are some of the pictures from our first day in Istanbul, Turkey.


This is looking out our balcony doors into the town square.



Our hotel was on a back alley - it was a neat little community.



As we drove from the airport to the hotel we tried hard to get pictures of the hill where we would be staying for the next 3 nights. Some thing I learned about Istanbul was that it is built on 7 hills just like Rome.... pretty neat history behind Istanbul, Turkey.



We went out exploring the city on our second day and it was so much fun. We tried to get a taxi but none would stop for us. It just seemed like the locals got there first even if we were talking to the taxi driver the local would just jump into the taxi and off they went... It was pretty frustrating but then we decided who cares and we started walking to another area where there weren't so many people waiting for a taxi. Off we went but the farther we walked the more we got lost.

One funny story: We kept asking the locals for directions to the nearest taxi stand and it never failed that they would look to dwayne and begin talking Turkish but then Grace Lyn whipped out her handy dandy language book and began asking " where taxi stand?" it sounded good and immediately the person began to tell us but it was in Turkish.. .HA! we all were like, I think I understand... it's up the hill that way.. How you ask did we understand? Well, inevitably they pointed...... :)
So here we are mimicking all those we asked... Where is Taxi Stand?

We did find a taxi in a very unexpected way. A young man saw our laughter and thought he might be able to help us. We were just deciding that we could walk back to the hotel - when this young man said, I can take you to your hotel. We were like you have TAXI... in slow broken english that was more like,

You taxi? - as our hands are mimicking driving a car.

his reply: Yes - right here. It was a small, very small van... kind of like the mian bao che in china. So we all looked at eachother and laughed and said, WHY NOT?

We climb in - all 7 of us it was a hoot.....

It was a great memory of our first real adventure in Istanbul-



Here is the shop that was just around the corner. I loved the look of it. As you can tell- it looks pretty cool!

Turkey

here is a picture of an ancient pot. It is pretty cool because this pot is not totally excavated.


okay, so this is a cat... but there were alot of cats in Turkey. Usually we see lots of dogs but there were few dogs and tons of cats.. They were healthy ones too.. :)


ruins ... of ephesus


here is one of the many stone carvings.... pretty cool stuff.

More pics of Turkey

Here is another picture of the Library in Ephesus



This is one of the many statues in the Library of Ephesus



This is the Gladiator tunnel going it to the arena/stadium where they would fight but this is also the stadium where the Christians were killed and persecuted.


Here is the stadium on the out skirts of the town of Ephesus. This was often times used for performances.


This is the Main stadium for Ephesus. This is where the gladiator tunnel entered into.....

Ephesus

Here are a few of our pictures.


Here is Dwayne walking on the road going into the city.


Here is one of the arches that have been put back together. Most of the city was destroyed from earthquakes so what they did was reconstruct what the city was like back when it was thriving.


Here is the Library. It was so amazing. When this was build long ago they built it so that it would look much bigger than it really was- so from afar it looks like this massive building but once you get right up to it- it really isn't as big as it looked from afar. Mind you it is still a big building. One of the coolest things was seeing the stone carved and having the names of the ruling powers. Ceasur's name and those of his family! That was pretty dog gone cool.....


Here is the carving I told you about with Ceasur's name posted on it.....

Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving from our family to yoursHere are the kids all enjoying their plates of food.
ymmy it was all so good!

Justin had the camera -
and yes he
has the cutest face ever!

It was great to have such good friends to
enjoy this Thanksgiving with....

And the Turkey was Good....
Dwayne was the carver
and carve he did!