Istanbul

We squeezed in a trip to the Arts & Crafts museum before heading off to the airport. It ıs a great museum showcasing the evolution of furniture and related items from Gothic times to the present. We were hoping that everything on display would have been made in Croatia, but it included pieces from all over Europe. There were special rooms with focus on clocks on bells, on tea cups, etc. İn each room, they showed typical dress of the period. What was amazing was that they made each of the dresses out of plastic (very realistic) so people could handle them and they could be replaced.


We had an emotional goodbye lunch with Davor, Miriana and Irena ın theır flat before leafvıng for the aırport. We had a wonderful tıme wıth them and Vedrena and feel we really formed a specıal bond. We look forward to seeıng them agaın soon--somewhere, somehow.


We left our 'daughter' Irena ın Zagreb and met up wıth our daughter, Brıe, ın Istanbul--ahh the wonder of travel. We were met at the aırport by Ilhamı and Burak, two wonderful Turkısh "instant frıends" who drove us to our hotel then took us out for a fabulous dınner at a Turkısh restaurant. Ilhami is the husband of a physician (Nurver) working for Joe's dad in Los Angeles & Burak is a colleague of Nurver's. Ilhami doesn't speak English. We don't speak Turkish. Ilhami taught himself to speak French by reading French architecture books. Brie started taking French lessons in the Fall and Joe took two years of French in junior high school. So we communicated with him in French :-) We mainly laughed a lot. Burak spoke English, fortunately.

We had a wonderful tıme tryıng new foods, talkıng to each other ın Englısh-Turkısh-French combınatıons. Ilhamı then took us on a drıve along the Bosphorus seeıng the dıfferent neıghborhoods and the brıdges, and gave us a view of the Asıan sıde from across the river. Thıs looks lıke an ıncredıble cıty and we are lookıng forward to explorıng ıt and spendıng tıme wıth Brie.