Istanbul and Dubai

Our travels next took us to fabulous Turkey. I didn't quite know what to expect upon arriving in Istanbul, but I loved it – what a great city. The architecture is just great looking, and the city has genuine character. Among it's most famous sights is the Haghia Sophia...

Once it was a church, then a mosque, and now it is a museum. But what a structure; the pinnacle of which is an enormous self supporting dome in the center. Unlike other cathedrals and mosques, this one is without any supporting columns inside – an amazing feat.

Inside the Haghia Sophia are some ancient tile mosaics like this one....

Just across the street is the equally famous “Blue Mosque”, seen just behind this fountain...

It is so named because of the liberal use of blue in its interior. It really was a stunning building to visit. However, unlike its neighbor across the street (i.e. the Haghia Sophia), the Blue mosque resorts to using four giant "elephant feet" pillars to support the weight of its roof.

Also stunning, but in an entirely different way, was this local favorite...

The label says “hot fermented carrot juice”, but our host here explained that there is a translation error. It is actually spicy fermented raddish juice. Mmmmm. Needless to say, we only bought one of these.

On the opposite end of the “delicious spectrum” were the offerings from the many sweet shops. Now these were good...

Just across from the Blue mosque (and below street level) is an ancient water cistern. A really big one. It is probably an acre or more in size, and for many years held drinking water for the city. At one point it was decommissioned, and subsequently forgotten. Not too long ago it was discovered during construction in the area, and now has been restored for its historical value. It's eerily beautiful down inside. There is a raised walkway through it (because it still holds water about 20 cm deep), and the soft lighting and many columns look very nice. Oh – and it has fish in it too – lots of them.

Typical colors at one of the many cafes

Again, in the same area as the Haghia Sophia and Blue Mosque was the Sultan's residences, known as Topkapi Palace.

The palace grounds are a large walled campus, the hilight of which was the inner sanctum called the harem, guarded and attended to by eunuchs. Not any more – I mean historically - there are no longer any eunuchs at Topkapi.

Inside the palace, the floors, walls and ceilings were elaborately decorated. Ancient Turkey was famous for its ability to produce blue tiles. Here is one of the many mosaics in the harem...

Afterwards we went to a Kurdish restaurant and had a most unusual dessert of candied pumpkin, and candied tomatoes. They were pretty good, actually.

This picture shows Europe on the right and Asia on the left. These two continents are separated here by the Bosporus strait.

We took a nice sight seeing cruise up and down the strait and really got to see what a beautiful city Istanbul is...

Take a look at this nice neighborhood on the banks of the Bosporus. I wouldn't mind to live here...

Istanbul was good to us, and we have fond memories. Thanks also to Dave and Sarah (an American couple who we met on our African safari) for hosting us in Istanbul. Dave is getting his PhD in Turkish history, and so he and his wife Sarah moved to Istanbul for a year, and they kindly put us up in their spare room for our time there.



DUBAI

After Istanbul we went to Dubai for a few days. I must say that in the past I had been a little critical of Dubai, but the city has completely changed my mind. Previously I held the opinion that it was myopic and wasteful of Dubai to be blowing its money on transient things like the world's tallest building, or an indoor ski hill, or the world's largest shopping mall, etc. I felt that their oil riches would be better spent on legitimate infrastructure such as roads, universities, hospitals, etc. Well, after having been there I see they have done that – there's lots of high quality infrastructure (hospitals, airport, schools, metro system, security, etc.) and they're also setting themselves up in other industries to be prepared for the day that their oil dries up. But with all the extra money, they're creating top quality world-attention-grabbing projects, such as the world's tallest building for $4 Billion USD, or a new state of the art F1 race track for $1 Billion USD, etc. These efforts are really getting them noticed. So it's not that these flashy projects are taking money away from the critical items – they're just using their “spare change” to make headlines around the world, and create some awareness. So, after having been there, I admit I was wrong, and I salute the Emir for his micro-nation building strategy.

Although I must say, for all the money they put into the world's tallest building (Burj al Dubai), I thought they could have benefited from a little better quality control...

...or maybe that's just my unsteady hand and a photo-stitch gone wrong. Here's another shot at it...

And just to give it the full perspective, here's a short video clip showing the building in its surroundings.

In general Dubai was fairly western, but it does stay true where it counts. There will be no tolerance for displays of affection...

But indoor skiing is encouraged.

My eye was caught by this cool moving sign at one of the shops...

In all we had just three days or so in Dubai, and we thoroughly enjoyed them. And we were surprised to see that if you try even just a little, it's not hard to conserve cash. E.G. a nice hotel was about $65 CAD per night, the metro cost about $1 CAD, and a reasonable dinner was less than $15 CAD. Of course if you're rich you can easily spend more, but it it's also true that it was not difficult to find reasonable prices for just about everything (except the Ferraris which were costly every where I checked). It was also during our time in Dubai that we reached the half way point on our trip. We're six months in now.

On a closing note, I'd like to say thanks to everyone for your concern over my arms. The surgery in Jordan went fine, and they are healing nicely. They say I might even be able to keep the right arm entirely! ;-)

Egypt, Jordan, Palestine, and Israel

Travel is an adventure, and that's why we do it, but it isn't always fun and games; sometimes things go wrong. Here's an example of a bad day: It started off only slightly bad, as our travel agent did not book us adjacent seats on our flight into Qatar. That in itself was minor but she had also failed to arrange for Amanda to have a vegetarian meal so she went hungry for dinner. When we arrived in Qatar (a one night stop over on our way from Kenya to Egypt), we were not sure how to get our entry visas – we were just told that they would be provided upon arrival. I understood that to mean they would be free, but nope. Anyway, we stood in the queue and when we were served we were told to go into a different queue. Once we made our way through to the front the guy there told us to go back into the first queue, where we had to pay the full price for entry visas (about $125).

Now the real fun began. Amanda had booked us an affordable room at the YHA youth hostel. We were told it was near the city center, so we hailed a cab and asked to be taken there. I asked if I could pay my cab fare with my credit card, and he said no – cash only. And so began a tour of the city to find a bank machine that could accept my card.

After several failed attempts I finally got cash, and so we then wanted to get to our hotel, but our driver did not know the YHA so we just told him to take us into the city center and we'd find it from there. I asked at a different hotel if they knew where it was, and they gave me an address and a phone number and our driver said he knew the area. Great. It'll be easy now, right? Not quite. He took us to an area far from the city center and then said he couldn't find the hotel. He tried the phone number, but it was an incorrect number. Meanwhile the cab fare is climbing, we're wasting our time, and nobody is having a good time. We just told the driver to take us back into town as there were NO hotels in this area. We paid him, and then found an internet cafe where we re-confirmed the address and the phone number.

Since we had a booking at this YHA hostel we didn't really want to forfeit the night's fee, so we found a new cab and asked if he knew the YHA. He said he knew it, and he drove us all the way back to the area the first driver took us to, except this guy did know exactly where it was. Great, right? Not quite. They were closed. The sign out front said they close at 11:00 pm and it was about 10:59. When she made the reservation, Amanda had indicated that we would arrive around 11:00 and besides, most hostels have 24 hour front desk service. We tried to phone, but we could not get through and we had no way to get inside or even get their attention, so we gave up on our booking there. We had spent over three hours in cabs by now, but our driver knew of an inexpensive hotel not far from the airport, so after driving back into town we said we would take it.

As is common, the guy at the front desk asked to see our passports and he noticed we have different last names, so he asked if we were indeed married. Oh yes, we told him – over four years now. Not satisfied, he asked if we had a marriage certificate. Before we started this journey I thought it might be wise to have that type of info handy, so I had a photocopy of our marriage certificate. Except I had it in my checked baggage and since Doha was just a one-night stop over on our way to Egypt, our bags were checked all the way through to Cairo. I.E. we didn't get our bags in Qatar, so I happened to not have a copy of our marriage certificate at this moment. The guy at the front desk thought this all sounded very suspicious and refused to sell us a room for the night. Fortunately there was a more liberal attendant at the hotel next door and so we stayed there.

In all we spent about $125 in visas, another $125 in cab fares, and about $100 for a room. We wasted so much of our time waiting in queues, and driving all over the place that we didn't actually have time to see or do anything with our one evening in Qatar. What a waste of time and money.

But we did get to Egypt - we started with Cairo. He's the ubiquitous pic of the Giza pyramid just outside of Cairo.

As you can see, we did a bit of a tour via camels. I'm a camel pro from way back. It's easy!



All over the ancient cites I was really taken with all the very well preserved hieroglyphics.



My favorite is the scarab...

I was also impressed that many temples still had hieroglyphics with intact colors. Imagine - these colors are 4,000 years old and still quite vibrant. I thought they were fantastic!



Among the most amazing of monuments is Abu Simbel, home to Pharaoh Ramses II's tomb. This was a colossal monument to Egypt's most successful pharaoh. I admire the mastery of mathematics exhibited by the ancient Egyptians. See the entrance at the center of the temple - well deep inside the temple are four other statues, one of which is pharaoh Ramses II. Twice a year (Oct 22 and Feb 22) the sun will shine through the entrance and fall exactly on the statue of Ramses II. Not impressed? How about if I tell you that Oct 22 was his birth date and Feb 22 was his coronation date. Wow eh? They built and oriented this huge tomb with an exact appreciation of celestial mechanics. I was floored when I learned that.



And as a testament to modern engineering, I also learned that this entire structure was literally cut into thousands of pieces, disassembled, moved to higher ground (on account of imminent flooding from a hydro-dam project) and then put back together. That was done in the 1960s, and was done so well, there is absolutely no evidence that this has been done (other than the photo exhibit).



Cairo had lots of markets, with many stalls selling colorful spices...

And we visited the mosque dedicated to the great warrior Saladin.



Based on the good advice given to us by our friend Axel, we took a two day cruise down the Nile river. The scenery was spectacular. Very relaxing to sit atop our luxury boat and watch 4,000 years of history roll past. Here you can see the old felucca sailing boats plying their way up and down the Nile...



We also did an overnight trip into the Sahara desert where we slept under the stars with our Bedouin guide.



This part of the Sahara is called the "White Desert" because of these strange calcium deposits. There where hundreds of them - this one is called "Chicken Rock". These rocks were very fragile and were probably nothing more than chalk from a dried up sea.




After visiting the ancient Egyptian artifacts in Cairo, Aswan, and Luxor we went to the resort town of Dahab, and did a little SCUBA diving. Then we were off to the Kingdom of Jordan...



Jordan's greatest claim to fame is the ancient city of Petra. This place is really cool - it's a city built by excavating and carving into the mountains. Want a room, no problem - hollow out a space in the cliff face. Wow - talk about a lot of work! Not content with a simple "hole in the wall" these people created some enormous, and beautiful edifices. This one is called the Treasury.





And this next on is the Monestary.




To get an appreciation for the scale involved take a look at the people standing on this one...



And it went on and on.... There were many tombs and rooms.



Many had elements of detailed carving, like this elephant head.



And then there were the "English" signs to help the tourists. Yes, this is English - well, it's supposed to be anyway. Can you understand what it's telling you?




I think it says the desert town of Wadi Araba, and Palestine and Israel and a tomb and Little Petra and room 468 are located on a high knoll opposite the door. But then again, they have a funny accent here, so I'm not sure about that.

Here's a funny pic that the horse owner got very upset at me for taking. I'm still not sure what the big deal was. I thought it was very cute. Lucky dog.



In Jordan we resumed our Couch Surfing habits. We stayed with a Bedouin man named Nawaf who was my age and had seven kids. I'm guessing that it's his busy household that gave him the idea to get a second apartment just for him where his wife and kids are not allowed. He still visits them daily in their apartment, but his is off limits. He also owns an ancient cave very near Petra, and that's where we "Cave Surfed" with him. We got the royal treatment where he cooked Bedouin meals for us and one night his friend came with us and he played his lute.



I made this short video too so you can hear a little of his playing. Of course I can't use the flash in video mode, so it's kind of dark, but you get the idea...



It was during these days at Petra that two innocent little red dots on my arms became badly infected. I was advised to travel to Amman (Jordan's capital city) for an emergency consultation. Here's what one of the two looked like...



So the doctor in Amman recommended immediate surgery on both arms. I didn't argue so I was prepared for a brief surgery (under a general anesthetic)...



And here's that same arm afterwards. That hole goes pretty deep inside my arm.



But my compliments to the doctors and other staff at the hospital. They were great. Very capable and professional. And it seemed sort of like I was the only western patient they had ever seen; in my three days in the hospital I had many visitors. Of course the doctor visited a few times, and I was attended to almost every two hours by the nurses, but I also had the hospital's PR director visit me, the quality assurance manager, a flock of interns led by their supervisor, a nutritionist and even the cook! Well, maybe my family wasn't there to visit me, but these people all made a special impression with me. I almost can't wait to go back to the hospital in Amman. Almost.

And then we crossed over into Palestine and Israel. Here we are in front of the most famous Dome of the Rock mosque. This image, more than any other, is the icon of Jerusalem.



We were both fascinated with the history of Jerusalem. Of course coming from a Christian background we were much more familiar with Jerusalem's Christian history, and there is so much of it. Here, for example, is the exact spot where Jesus was assisted by Simon in bearing the burden of his cross on the walk to his crucifixion.

And this is reported to have been the hall where Jesus and his disciples dined during the last supper.



In contrast to the incredible architecture of the European cathedrals, this humble looking building is actually the Church of the Holy Sepulcher - the holiest site in the Christian faith. Before the church stood here, this was the outskirts of Jerusalem, and this desolate hill is the actual spot where Jesus was crucified. It was an indescribable feeling to be in such a venerated spot. Absolutely awe inspiring.



It's an interesting mix in Jerusalem of Islam, Christianity and Judaism. The city is home to many important events and relics of all three religions that they must share. Even the different branches of these religions argue and posture over who has the right to control what. So take a look at the picture above. See the center window? Just below it is a little wooden ladder. That ladder has been there for hundreds of years, we're told. The reason is that this very holy church is sacred to many branches of Christianity, and they don't get along well. So every decision about the building must be made by a committee, and nothing is ever agreed to - so the ladder has not been moved since this ruling committee has been formed. In fact, the original ladder became so badly weathered and deteriorated that it was actually replaced with a new "old ladder" in the exact same position to be debated about removing!




Important to the Jewish faith in the city is the Wailing Wall. Unknown to many people, this wall never was part of the first Jewish temple - nothing is left of that structure. This wall is simply part of the retaining wall that was built to hold the temple grounds in place. But it's the closest remains the Jews have to their first temple, so it gets a great deal of attention.



One of the best secular attractions in the area is the dead sea (found 1,400 feet below sea level). The water is seven times saltier than the oceans, which gives it incredible buoyancy. Even I could float in it!



Not only that, but it's said that the mud of its shores has excellent hygienic properties, so we thought we'd try it out and see...




On a more serious note we saw in Jerusalem one of the many separation walls built by the Israeli government to contain and cut off the Palestinians. Hopefully one day this wall will be a famous bit of history just like the Berlin wall. Until then it poses serious problems for the people of Palestine and offers questionable security for the Israelis.



For example, at several sites through Jerusalem we saw these things...



...which are bomb disposal cannisters. Maybe these wouldn't be necessary if people weren't antagonized into desperate acts.