We awoke on our last day in Istanbul at the Marriott to rain. Sweet, blessed, cool rain! A welcome treat. Another inspection of the Marriott in daylight reveals that the whole property is ringed with concrete barriers, security booths, and Blue Blazered guards who are all obviously secretly armed.

On our trip to the Metro Station from Salih's house before we went to Kas we passed by the American Embassy. It sits on top of a huge hill surrounded by a very high wall. It looks like a medieval castle. Salih says there is one entrance which consists on a long concrete tunnel which leads to a security controlled elevator which brings you some 50 feet to the lobby. The tunnel and elevator turn into killing fields should someone try to attack the Embassy again. But, after seeing the embassy fortifications your first thought is, "Those guys are afraid of something".

And yes, lord, we actually had an ice machine on our floor at the Marriott! I got so excited that I took a picture of it. I am sure that the Travelers waiting at the elevator watching me thought I was a bit touched in the head.

Ataturk Airport is huge, dwarfing Seatac. To give you some idea, we were at gate 225 and the gate numbers went as high as 550! Security is tight here. We go through security two times and passport control once before getting to our gate. Across the air field I can see huge concrete bunkers resembling Quonset Huts which are housing military aircraft of some kind. The bunkers are arranged in a semi - circle. I can see 13 of them.

We flew to Munich, Germany on Turkish Airlines - coach - but it was a short flight and not too bad. We arrived to the usual "passport" control. This one into Germany was excruciating slow. Something that no one had any patience for! I was midway in the pack when it all started. But when all the shoving and pushing was done I was the last person to have my passport cleared. The ride Into town on the autobahn exceeded 180 k/hr - for those of you a little rusty on conversions, that's 110 miles per hour.

I called Heidi and Andrea G in the early morning. They are all doing fine driving up the coast from Kas to Ismir.

We checked into our hotel in Old Town near the Train Station. The desk clerk said he didn't have a reservation for me even though I had prepaid with $450 on my Amex card back in early August. When I showed him the AMEX confirmation number he told me they didn't use confirmation numbers. Huh? He had obviously sold the reservation out from under me for a higher price as the town was filling up for Octoberfest. AMEX called the owner of the hotel, not the manager I had been talking to, but the owner of the hotel chain who obviously cared more about his relationship with AMEX than the manager did. And lo and behold, they found my prepaid reservation. It had been there all along? Amazing! We were in our room soon after that call ended.

A little hot and frustrated after we saw the room we had fought so hard for, we walked around town for about 6 hours. After all, Rick Steves recommended this hotel. I think he must have been into the ganga pretty heavy the night he stayed here. But, Mary and I both have stayed at worse places and we are very happy to be this close to the action.

The face of Munich has changed a lot since we were here last in 1967. The old town of Munich is full of Arabs, their covered women, and North Africans - robes, turbins and all. Within two blocks of our hotel we didn't see anyone who even looked like a german. We did manage to find a real german snitzel place near the Marienplatz and it was as I remembered - delicious!

Finally home around 9:00 pm and in bed asleep by 9:30. It had been a long day. We were entertained most of the rest of the night by the street life below our window but we were so tired we really didn't care.