Istanbul

I hope that everyone had a wonderful Christmas. I was very blessed to have spent my Christmas in Istanbul, Turkey with some very good friends. It is such a beautiful city and I enjoyed my time there so much. While I wish that I had been able to spend the holidays with my own family, my friends have become like family and we had a great Christmas together. I've never actualy seen a white Christmas although it did snow the day after Christmas...close enough for me!

The water behind me is the Bosphorous Strait. The city is split, half of it is in Asia and half in Europe. I am standing on the Asian side overlooking the European side.

This is a view of the city and the Sea of Marmara.

Here we are in the largest covered market in the world. We spent quite a bit of time in the market, 2 hours in this ceramics store alone. We drank apple tea and visited with the shop owner, bargained for about 45 minutes and ended up with most of what we wanted for a reasonable price.

This is one of the most famous mosques in the world, the Blue Mosque. It is the only one in the world that has 6 minarets, most have 4 or less.

Most of the time we were there the weather was cold and rainy but on Christmas day it cleared up for a few hours, just in time for a beautiful sunset.

And here's my favorite 2-yr old in the the entire world. Turkey has the most beautiful hand-woven rugs and we spent several hours one afternoon in this rug shop. He showed us some amazing carpets but they were all well over $750, even that brightly colored pillowcase next to her was $250...so I settled for a few smaller things.