İstanbul not Constantinople and definitely not Damascus
Depending on how you look at it, we had our first major trip setback here when we petitioned the Syrian consulate for a visa. They claim that starting July 1st, the only way for an American to get into Syria was by getting a visa through the Washington DC consulate. That’s a little bit out of our way, so after some half-hearted research we decided to just visit Syrian airspace on a flight directly to Jordan. Unfortunate, but perhaps somewhat safer. Although this does give us a bit more time to explore Georgia and Armenia. Azerbeijain also sounds interesting and untamed, but I can’t write blogs if I can’t spell the country…
And in other news, Constantinople is stıll the home of Sultans. We ran into this kid on an outing with his family to one of the palaces. He had an entourage of tourists waiting in line to take a photo with him.
Posted in Uncategorized | 6 Comments »
August 25th, 2006 at 2:40 pm
Steve looks so cute in that costume. Much better than that harem thing he was wearing at Sackett’s Semicon party.
August 28th, 2006 at 8:53 am
Prolly a good idea to skip Syria for now. And Algeria as well, if that’s anywhere in your itinerary–some cleric gave the okay for killing any foreigners right.
August 29th, 2006 at 11:10 am
http://travel.state.gov/travel/cis_pa_tw/tw/tw_1764.html
August 30th, 2006 at 10:59 am
For the uninitıated, the website above is the US department of State travel advisory site. I find the UK Foreign and Commenwealth Office sıte a bit more informative http://www.fco.gov.uk. Our itinerary has collected two countries labelled ‘avoid’ by the US, Kenya and Sudan. But it is Georgia on our minds now.
August 31st, 2006 at 9:02 am
there’s bombings targeted in tourist areas and there’s no gov’t warnings to avoid Turkey. go figure.
September 28th, 2006 at 12:07 pm
this picture is not so cute when you realize it’s the garb for his “snip snip” which typically happens when they’re 6-8yrs old. what we’ve been told is that the boys are told that they’re going to get a lot of money and gifts after his ceremony, otherwise why would he be smiling?