Çanakkale
Turkey
11 November 2009

Dear DrMuscarella

Cc:  Family and friends
 
Thank you, Oscar, for encouraging me to travel to Çanakkale to visit the ruins of Troy.
 
The guidebooks praise the hilltop view to the valley and the Dardanelles – the strait that connects the Sea of Marmara and the Aegean Sea.  And the ruins themselves, even for a non-professional, are impressive.  What is truly seductive is that when I gaze into the archeological dig, I look down into 5000 years of human settlement in this area.  (“Was this the face that launch’d a thousand ships, and burnt the topless towers of Ilium?”)
 

 July 20, 2002

Istanbul, Turkey

Dear Family and Friends,

Turkey. What a wonderful country!  Beautiful rivers and mountains and valleys.  Excellent sites.

Istanbul.  What a wonderful city!  Elegant mosques and palaces.  Hospitable and enthusiastic people.

In Istanbul, the most pleasurable moment of the day was to stop for a while, take a coffee and just watch and listen.

Edirne

Turkey

12 November 2009

Dear Family and Friends,

Someone once criticized me for taking too few "people" photos and too many "building" photos. OK. Maybe. OK. But in Edirne, how could I resist, how could I resist the buildings?

The guidebook uses the phrases "an embarrassment of architecture" and "splendid architecture." It's no exaggeration.

I walked from mosque to mosque and market to market, thankful that I decided to come here and thankful that I remembered to recharge the battery in my camera.

Kıyıköy
Turkey

15 November 2009

Dear Family and Friends,

The Black Sea.  I have never been here before.  I’ve been to Romania three times but I never went to Constanţa, the popular beach resort.  I’ve been to Bulgaria but I avoided Varna.   I guess I avoid the noisy, popular beach resorts now.  Too much...I don’t know…too much of the stuff I don’t do anymore. 

Anyway, here I am in tiny Kıyıköy (pop 2500).  From my hotel balcony, the view is the wonderfully blue waters of the Black Sea.*