A short description of Uncle Paul's time in Istanbul. Be on the look-out for a movie review tomorrow.
On Friday, Elena was feeling well
enough to join the tour group, though she had very little food for
breakfast. Fortunately, she got better
as the day went on. Today we made a
visit to the Istanbul Archaeological Museum.
Taylan has a degree in archaeology, so he acted as our tutor as we went
through the museum. We began in one
building, the Museum of the Ancient Orient, where Taylan lectured us about the
Hittites and the Kadesh Treaty. We then
moved to the main building of the museum, where Taylan gave a brief
presentation and eventually let us wander around the museum on our own, where
we enjoyed viewing the antiquities and took many photos. Elena and I went briefly to the “Tiled
Kiosk,” which contained rooms decorated with beautiful tiles. We sat outside for a while after this,
enjoying the sunny day, and the group left the museum grounds together. At this point, Elena and I had some lunch at
another “point and shoot” place, and we returned to our room to rest for a
while.
In the evening, the group met in
the hotel lobby to walk together to our farewell dinner. After about 10 minutes of walking we ended up
at a restaurant attached to a very toney hotel.
Elena and I sat at a table with three of our tour colleagues that we
hadn’t much talked to previously, and Elena was well enough by now that she was
able to eat a good portion of her food.
I ate pretty much everything put in front of me. Our dining was accompanied by a Turkish piano
player, playing (of all things) Broadway show tunes. One of our tour members, a thoracic surgeon,
took over the piano for a couple of tunes, getting appreciative applause from
the group. Taylan toasted the group and
one of our tourists toasted Taylan for doing such a good job. The dinner turned out very well and we walked
back to the hotel together to call it a night.
No comments:
Post a Comment