From Boston, I went straight to Turkey for two weeks. This was certainly the most unique part of my vacation: Turkey is an amazing place, filled with ancient marvels as well as (obviously) a thriving modern culture. It was especially fun to be there with Claire, who is now essentially fluent in Turkish, though she won't admit it: it made more direct contact with the country possible as well as increased our confidence! We did so much that it would be silly to try to relate everything and show every picture; rather, I'll just go over the highlights.

I met Mom in Dublin on my stopover there, and met Claire in Istanbul. From our first day, here are some views of Istanbul taken from Istanbul's Galata Tower. The first, especially, bears a distinct resemblance to the previous post's view of Boston from the Bunker Hill Monument. The water coming in from the right is the Golden Horn, which leads into the Bosporus:



The second is slightly more to the right along to Golden Horn. The minarets jutting up are, left to right, the Hagia Sophia, the Blue Mosque, and I'm not sure (the Mosque of Suleyman the Magnificent?).



Here's a picture of a stall in Istanbul's touristy but amazing spice market:



We took the night train to Ankara, where we met up with Claire's host sisters before climbing up to the old castle area, not really maintained anymore except by its inhabitants, the most visible of whom are now shopkeepers and craftsellers. We climbed past them to the top, where we had a view of this massive city which extends in all directions yet has virtually no natural water source:



We finished the day with a delicious meal at Claire's host family's house. You'll note the watermelon: apparently Turkey grows most of its own fruit, so people eat the things that are in season. Watermelon was in season while we were there, and we had it for at least one meal, and often two, every day.



After a quick trip to Konya, long-time home of Mevlana (generally known here as Rumi) and his dervishes, we were based in the coastal resort town of Antalya for several hot days. Much of our travel around there was to visit ancient Greek and Roman ruins.
On day 1, we visited Termesos with a smelly taxi driver. It's located in a beautiful national forest:



...and has, among many other ruins, an impressive theater in a jaw-dropping location surrounded by mountains. I would love to see a production there...




On Day 2, having reunited with Dad, we visited Aspendos, Perge, and a beautiful waterfall. All three were hard to truly capture with a camera, since much of the magic lay in roaming around extensive ruined cities, enjoying the freedom allowed at these sites (in contrast to anything historically valuable in the US or most of Europe), and gaining a better understanding of and appreciation for ancient life. Nevertheless, I took several photos, stitched together into a panorama, that give some idea of Aspendos. It holds the best-preserved ancient theater in Turkey (it seats 15,000), but more fun for me was wandering the trails behind the theater to other parts of the ancient city. We didn't meet a single other person on the trails until we were essentially back at the theater.



We also spent a day in Olympos, kind of a hippie town. Claire and I spent the night in one of the town's trademark "treehouses" (while Mom and Dad slept in a bungalo with AC):



From there we made it to the Chimera, a place on a mountain where escaping gas is permanently alight in many places...



...and of course to Olympos' main draw, a beautiful beach surrounded by mountains and ruins.



Next on the itinerary was Kapadokya (cappadocia), an amazing place somewhat rreminiscent of the American southwest in that much of the landscape looks completely unearthly:



Completely unlike the American southwest, on the other hand (mesa dwellings being the obvious exception), is that 1. this area was pretty well populated for a long space of time and 2. those people found the ash-rock easy to escavate, so they built into, rather than on top of, the formations. In the picture above, for example, the holes in the rock lead (as many do) to small churches. In fact, even a short walk through this very large area will uncover tons of rock-cut dwellings and churches, too many, in fact, to even preserve or mark them all. (In the modern towns, in addition, these formations and their ancient excavations are integrated into people's shops, dwellings, and homes.) Many of the rock-cut churches were beautifully painted, but only the darkest churches' wall-paintings avoided light damage.




Here's a dramatic rock-cut castle:



and the ubiquitous "fairy chimneys," formed by the different erosion patterns of the volcanic ash rock below and the basalt above:



Kapadokya is one place I'd go back to in heartbeat, and so is the Hagia Sofia (back in Istanbul). Built in the 500s AD in just 5-6 years, it defies the imagination in its scope, art, and history (Byzantine church for 900 years, Ottoman mosque for 500 years, secular museum for close to 100 years: traces of all three stages remain). Again it's hard to capture such a place in photos, but I got a few, of an old (original?) ceiling mosaic:



A later, even more beautiful mosaic:



And a little piece of the inner main body, Mary and Jesus in the upper left, Gabriel to the right of them, the name "Allah" (right?) (oops, my blog is probably on the terrorist watch list now) in Arabic calligraphy on a giant medallion, and the Moslem version of a pulpit below that.



This was truly an amazing trip, and Claire, Mom, and Dad deserve my many thanks for making it possible.

If anyone's interested in a good rundown of my (and my family's) Ireland trip, I highly recommend Nate's coverage, which is excellent and which I don't intend to duplicate.