Hello, again, Blogonauts! Alright, I am a bit behind. I've included a flush of photos as penance. The source for my seeming silence is .... hmmm ... I have it! ... a combination of jetlag and joie d'vivre! What better excuses can there be? I mean it ... what better excuse can you apply for me here? While I'm awaiting reasons to justify laziness, I'll slip into something a bit more industriousness This will therefore be a momentary burst of bloggishness. The...

Hello again, Blogonauts! Istanbul is indeed lovely, and among its charms are the various mosques and minarettes of the old city. Unfortunately, sometimes jarringly, from these minarettes comes a pre-dawn Arabic alarm clock. At precisely 5:36 AM, the loudspeakers on the nearby Blue Mosque sprang into surprisingly sonorous action as the muezzin urged the millions of Muslims within earshot to kneel for a bit and say a few ritualized words to Allah. Sleep, for the re...

Hello, again, Blogonauts! I'm off on another 2-week jaunt, this time to a panoply of European capital cities. We're starting in Turkey. And if first impressions count, Istanbul is toweringly IMPRESSIVE! It is a park-filled, flower-festooned capital. They seem to embrace both their ancient history, which is extensive, and the modern world. And after wandering through various other cities around the Mediterranean, Istanbul stands out from its peers for the seeming ...

Just a note to alert you to watch the blog for the next 2 weeks. I and a travel buddy are jetting to the eastern side of Europe to explore 4 cities: Istanbul, Vienna, Bratislava, and Prague. Watch as the adventure unfolds!

Yasas, Blogonauts! In Greece, "Yasas!" is the flexible, universal term that means both "Hello" and "Goodbye." Enter a shop? Yasas! Say good-bye to your host? Yasas! Strike your thumb with a hammer? Well, that involves another term altogether. On Sunday we boarded the subway en route to Piraeus and beyond. Piraeus is the harborside city that has served for millenia as Athens' seaport. Its name has such an "ancient" ring to it, as if ships bound for the Trojan ...