Doing Istanbul

This past weekend my parents were in Istanbul for one day. They are currently on a cruise, and their shore excursions happened to be in Istanbul so we made the drive over to spend the day with them. Surprisingly I didn't take pictures. Or well...I only took one picture.


This one. I loved the trunk of this tree. I loved the way it looked camouflaged. Really pretty.

Then I put the camera away and didn't care a bit about taking other pictures. Not sure why...probably the mood I have been in lately. But Anna Grace did want to take pictures. She took my camera while we were visiting the Hagia Sophia and snapped away. Just today I uploaded those pictures and found this.


Totally cracked me up.

Then on the way back to Ankara we ran into a little traffic. And when I say traffic I mean that the cars weren't moving at all. There was obviously a problem up ahead.


And men started getting out of cars. There was basically a party happening in the middle of the freeway.

Oh...and Anna Grace had to pee.

We knew there was a Burger King up ahead at some point so she was given the option of sitting in the car and waiting until the traffic started moving, getting out of the car and walking to Burger King, or peeing on the side of the road.


Did I mention that there were people all over the side of the road?

She decided that we could walk to Burger King. We got out and traipsed down the freeway, weaving in and out of men. There were a few covered ladies sitting in the grass but mostly there were men. I know the sight of three blond-haired kids (Erica chose to stay in the car with Brian) and their mother walking down the freeway turned a few heads. But press on we did. For a mile. The traffic started moving again when we were almost at the entrance to the Burger King. Brian pulled into the parking lot just as we did. By that point we all needed to go to the bathroom. We also ate dinner. And went to the bathroom again just to be on the safe side.

Nothing like the adventures of traveling in Turkey.