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. 

mimi and patricia at our  chi chi lunch


down in ortakoy below our bridge

these are some lamps at the spice bazaar
closeup of some rose tea

this is the spice market.......sooo amazing the colors and all the really expensive spices just in gargantuan heaps

these shots are at the basilica cistern: its the old underground reservoir for topkapi palace its probably my favorite site so far in istanbul...its really cool.  apparently there are some concerts there as well so we're gonna try to go.  there are fishies there too.