A few additional newworthy items

I was told the tour guides spoke english. I got on the bus (alone) at my hotel and the driver had a map above the windshield on the bus. As I am a visual person, I asked him to point out where we were going. It quickly became clear that he did not speak a word of english! I thought "This is going to be a looong morning."

He took me to a point were we were grouped with our tour guides according to the language spoken on the tour. We had a very nice young local man who was quite knowledgeable and spoke fairly good english.

We took our shoes off because the Mosque is still an active holy place - a huge floor of Turkish worship rugs - Friday is holy day and at noon the city is blaring with loudspeakers of the worship chants. People who can not get in the mosques take their shoes off on the sidewalks and worship on their knees and noses right out in public. We were told that the locals do not allow worshiping in the Sophia, (even though it was a Catholic Church for hundreds of years). Even when the Pope's have come to visit, they are allowed to tour the building, as I did, but they may not bless the building or pray in the building.

Yes, those were cats on the motor scooter!

I have tried to call Lynn regularly, but have not had much success. I last spoke with her on Tuesday, seems like weeks ago. She spent two nights at David and Tanya's, so she had good company. My hotel room looks exactly like the room in the photo below.

I sent a load of laundry the other night and it was quite well done. I am set for the next week.

Interesting note, my mom and my boss, our founder, both suggested I take "Airborne" to avoid catching a cold on the planes. I offered Ken, my British boss, a pill, in Chicago, on Friday night, and he said "no thanks mate." Same thing Tuesday at Heathrow, en route to Istanbul. Guess how caught a cold? I supplied him with Contac, Tylenol and Coldeez yesterday morning. He called me last night to tell me he was feeling so badly, he wanted to skip dinner. I saw him briefly this morning and he sounded miserable.

Keep the questions coming, that way I know someone is reading this thing...