mom and i went for a nice dinner her last night in istanbul at a restaurant called mikla: it has a spectacular view of the city:

These are some pics from my ferry ride the other day to asia for dinner.  i signed up for a 15k in the istanbul marathon in october -- its the only marathon in which you run from one continent to another!! haha 

This is the port/harbor thing in kadikoy on the asian side.  its only like a 15 minute ferry ride across the bosphorus 

Below are some pictures from my trip to the Princes' Islands.  Its about a one hour ferry ride from Istanbul to Buyukada (the island i went to) and has been a vacation spot for hundreds of years.  there are no cars allowed on buyukada only horse drawn carriages...some of the horses look a little worse for wear and it makes me sad -- so i just walked to my friend's house.  it's a beautiful little island and i can see why people like it there so much

My friend's house had a pomegranate tree, a fig tree, and fresh grapes hanging over the balcony.  it was really cool.  i've never seen a pomegranate tree before!

below is one of the old ottoman/turkish homes on the island...many of which are sadly falling into disrepair

The photos below are pics i snapped on the ferry on my way to Buyukada.  The princes' islands number about 4/5.  I tried to take pictures of the small medium and large ones that i passed on the way to Buyukada (which literally means big island) 

These 3 photos below are from about 3 weeks ago when Mimi, Patricia and I went on our little beach vacation on the Aegean Coast.  These 3 photos were all I took before my camera died.  the town we were in was called Alacati and it was adorable...no cars or anything - just little shops and restaurants.  We stayed at a beach resort just outside Alacati where there were concerts every night -- we had the MOST AMAZING fish and fresh mezzes (originally a greek invention, -- they are cold appetizers prepared with olive oil) it was really delicious.