KDs Adventures: Turkey Update

If you are reading the blog and not checking the weather in Istanbul you might have been able to guess that the weather has gotten significantly better since the weekend because I have been on a blog post hiatus. We have spent the last 5 days trying to cram in seeing as much of Istanbul as possible. If you do come to visit, give yourself more than one week. As a side note, I have managed to set my google default to English and I have logged Mark in so there is no longer anything stopping him from writing a post except for the following: 1) there is soccer websites to read 2) there is a disc golf website to read 3) he is being lazy.

So the rainy Saturday ended with a bang. Perhaps one of the coolest things we did here was a night out in Asia with a bunch of Mike and Mel's ex-pat friends. Special thanks to Mel who organized the entire night. The night started out in a bit of a blur/rush. Mike and Mel were out all day with kids activities and ended up getting in a car accident! Everyone was OK and the car only had the back windshield damaged (a bread truck door hit them), but they spent a couple of hours dealing with that. They ended up getting home 10 minutes before they had to leave. You could tell they were rushed because all of the stuff ended up dumped in the front entrance and not put away! (The Wriggs are the most tidy family with 3 kids I have ever met, my mom would most definitely be jealous). The restaurant arranged for boats to pick us up on the Europe side and take us across the Bosphorus. Unfortunately it was still rainy and given the time of night it was dark, but it was still super neat. And Emily got another first... first boat ride! Getting there was OK, but on the way back I had to walk across the top of this wet boat then along the narrow slippery pathway to get in the cabin... sketchy! Dinner was amazing. Lots of wine, great food and amazing company. We were 14 (and a half including Emily) for dinner, we had Canadians, Dutch, Germans and a New Zealand couple. Emily was sleeping and good at the start, but once she woke up and saw the excitement she did not want to go back to bed. Everyone there had kids and took turns walking her around the fancy restaurant. It was amazing. In the end, she just wanted to sit up and look around. She was *exhausted* by the end of the night. We finished off the evening by heading back to the Wrigg's house for a few more drinks and great conversation.

The restaurant

Dinner and great company

The view from the restaurant on Asia side (and some pretty great photography skills by Mark)

Sunday was a slow start given the Saturday night festivities. We didn't want to loose another full day to the weather (it was still cold and rainy) so we headed to the Dolmabahce Palace. Mel, Oscar and Lucy made great guides. Unfortunately there are no pictures from inside the palace as you can't take pictures. Most likely because they want you to have to pay lots from the gift shop. It was an interesting experience, very lavish. We did get some good pics from the outside.