Istanbul, Monday

 How fun to see my named used on this tour bus!

 We had this for dinner one night. I added words to my vocabulary. Soup-çorbası (actually learned that the "ı" at the end makes the word 'soup of',) vegetables-sebze

 Our uphill trek lead us to İstiklal Cad. (street) the big commercial avenue. Lots of shops, lots of people, and the Nostalgic Tram running down the middle.

 There's one of the ubiquitous cimit stands. Those are the delicious round breads covered in sesame seeds. They are everywhere, like tea in glasses!

 We had lunch in a restaurant that Rick Steves recommended in his book. Otentika. Guess what that means? There were women in the front making that bread we ate. The food was very good and happily not a problem for me to get vegetarian dishes. The waiters spoke some English.

 We arrived in time for the 40 day Shopping Festival. No kidding. They were having a shopping festival.

 Very typical pottery, of which we got ourselves some tiny bowls.  

Here's that Nostagia Tram. Very cool to hear it's bell ring as it went back and forth. The crowds (which this view doesn't show) had to part to make way for it. We didn't ride it as it was always crowded. We walked the length of the street, many times.

On this very Monday, we walked to this end of the street, made a couple of turns and were in front of the Peak Hotel, where Katerina was staying. She's my Mail Art friend, that I've communicated with for at least a year. She managed to come to Istanbul to hang out with us and see friends (more on this later.)

The park, the country, and a dinosaur!

Last Sunday, my son, his girlfriend, and I went to the country to see our friends at their Pottery open house. It's become a tradition for us to do this on what's known as "Mother's Day." I'm not a big fan of "Mother's Day" having thought of it as a made-up celebration to sell a lot of greeting cards, flowers and candy and make some people feel badly that they don't a) have a mother or b) like the one they have. AND for me, Mother's Day in the bigger sense is every day for me because I've had a great time being a mom and have "kids" (now adults) who are very cool to spend time with any time. But my son and I have made this trek to the country (Manquin, VA) an annual thing. We buy a piece of pottery, we eat some crackers and cheese, we chat with our friends, and we enjoy their wonderful flower garden. A photo opportunity! Did you know that Mother's Day is supposed to be about mothers coming together to call for PEACE! Yup, it's an anti-war day, not a feel guilty that you didn't call your mom or take her to dinner day. I got myself a new mug with a deep purple glaze on part of it and a salad bowl/casserole, also with the deep purple.

My long shadow, ooh look at my long legs, was taken in the park when I went for a walk on Monday morning. I just love shadows of myself, especially when I have such long legs!
The dinosaur holding thread made me smile. I'd gone over to help my friend set up her mom's sewing machine, the thread rolled away under the sofa and when I went to look for it, I also found the dinosaur. I made little Jonah smile with my thread holding dinosaur.