2010 - Turkey - Day 12 - Ankara

Facts about Turkey: Churchill was a Hitler to the Turks in the first world war. Turks deny killing the Armenians. Hakan said they would not live peaceably in the country so they were asked to leave. He said they died to raiders and sickness. Today we came back to Istanbul. We left our hotel at 7:30 am. and stopped for a rest stop at 9:30. At the market there I bought a keychain for Mike, more cookies (I love the cookies!), and a necklace. We had our lunch stop a little before noon. We got some lentil soup (Josie tomato) which was really good. I also ordered some cheese filled pastry, but didn’t like it very much. We had one more rest stop until we reached Istanbul, and the traffic was terrible! It took us 30 minutes to get to our hotel that was a couple blocks away. Before we went to the hotel, we went on a Bosphorous river cruise. We had a big boat all to ourselves. It was fun to see the city from the water’s perspective. It was sunny and pretty warm, not too windy, until the boat turned around, then it got pretty cold, so we left the deck and went inside where it was warm, but we could still see the view well. After the cruise we came to our fancy hotel. Too bad we have such a short stay. We will be leaving the hotel at 2:45 am to go to the airport. We had a farewell dinner at a nearby restaurant. We had musicians playing for us, and some people danced. We had a good evening, and I really enjoyed our group of fellow travelers. Turkey has been wonderful and I have loved each day here.