One of the reasons for visiting Turkey was to catch up with my youngest son Rory.  He has been travelling around Europe and Turkey was a good central meeting place.  We flew in and he took a 10 hour bus ride from Bulgaria.  He has been on the road for 6 months now and the experience has changed him. He has grown wonderfully and the shape of the man is emerging.  He has worked in youth hostels, tilled fields, lived in Monasteries for weeks on end and even had a week of silence in one of them.  In many ways it has been rough travelling for him so meeting up with his parents was a joy for all concerned.  Here we are overlooking the Aegean, living the good life…

One of the joys of visiting other countries is to experience life on the road and how people really live as against staying in tourist hotels and living by the beach or in the capitol.  We rented a car and headed out into the wild blue yonder and was mesmerized by the different approaches to driving in Turkey…here is a classic example…..talk about unstable!!

Probably the best picture I could get of the dome.  As I walked around I could not help but think of the extraordinary measures that man will go to impose the abstract idea of “Faith” unto others…..A fact of daily Muslim life is the call to prayers, it is reinforced every day…Christianity I suppose rings bells every Sunday as a call to prayer.  I wonder why we can’t let everybody just believe what they want to believe?  What is the point of imposing your beliefs on others…the beliefs are abstract anyway…the rituals are not but the beliefs are…so I walked around this magnificent building that was a church, then a mosque and is now a museum thinking about the foibles of man…I had the same thought process when I visited the Vatican….

Taking pictures inside the Hagia Sofia was not easy as the light was poor and my flash not strong enough to reach the ceilings but trust me, this is a building that inspires awe and to think the it was built 500 AD is just mind blowing….

In 1453 Sultan Mehmed II conquered Istanbul (Constantinople) and ordered the building to be converted into a mosque. The bells and the altar were removed, and many of the mosaics were plastered over. The Islamic features such as the four minarets outside - were then added.

This shot does not do it justice but I like it because it is the original entrance…thus these bricks are way over 2000 years old and have literally stood the test of time…..

This was a small mosque downtown and considered quite new.  After all it was only constructed in 1597….

Being in the herb and spice business I was fascinated by the variety of the spices available.  Some of these were not on the GRAS list (Generally Regarded as Safe) but they tasted GREAT and could be used in future product development for teas.  I am looking forward to playing around with them in the lab…