Istanbul...in the full

Day 1:

The view across to the Asian side of Turkey.

Day 2:

Dolmabahce Palace (dol-mah-bah-che)

Day 3:

Ridiculously Old Byzantine City Walls, that withstood being stormed for 1,000 years.

Pretty Turkish Tile at Topkapi Palace (the other and older palace). They had an amazing treasury full of all types of things with precious stones all over them: everything from thrones to swords to canteens. Amazing!

Infamous Blue Mosque (due to the beautiful blue tiles inside,) which was a bit of a scandal as people thought it inappropriately rivaled the mosque in Mecca because it has 6 minerets.

We recommend the McTurco

Day 4:

Suleymaniya Mosque

The next pictures are from the spectacular large Archeological Museum. Kerry says it might be her favorite museum she's ever been too. As much as she's travelled, that's saying a lot!

Marcus's a plenty (sculptures of Marcus Aurelius)

All I can say is....

Grrrr!

Tile Mosaics excavated from the long entrance corridor to the palace in the actual ancient city of Babylon!

The Hagia Sofia...Once a huge anceint church, then a mosque, now a museum.

Yeah, the Hagia Sofia is pretty BIG!

Dinner inside a medieval themed below-ground restaurant in a large pillared room that was once one of the water cisterns for Constantinople, prior to the crusades.

Ambiance, baby, ambiance. There was even a live harpist playing to complete the atmosphere.

Blue Mosque lit up at night

Day 5:

We took a day cruise up the Bosphorus, the body of water that connects the Mediterranean with the Black sea. The boat stopped at numerous small village ports along the way to the last stop by the Black Sea, where we hiked up to a ruined castle!

I see the Black Sea!


This one is kind of funny...up at the castle there was a group of young Spaniards, and this one pulled out his pins and started juggling at the castle! I guess he was in the zone.

Look Back

Kerry and I are in the midst of copying many of the pictures from Kerry's laptop computer onto CDs, so we can continue to upload new photos to the computer. That's the reason the Istanbul pictures are taking so long to post...there isn't much space left on the hard drive to upload them yet.

But, during this process, it's fun to look back and see how we have changed. Here's a few pictures from our first few months as a couple, way back in 2003.

The first picture taken of us together...and it's on top of the McGuigan truck!

All done up for Westmont's annual President's Ball

Thanksgiving Break 2003 with Mom and Dad at the old Dallas Homestead...The weekend when Mom first met Kerry

Joe's Crabshack for Nif's birthday, back when I was probably still earning Nif's approval :P

These were very fun and exciting times! Back then, who would have guessed that just 3.5 years later we would be married and be living in Egypt for a second straight year?!! God's plans certainly are surprising! I'm very confident though, that there are many, many more exciting adventures still ahead for us together. Thank you all for sharing in and adding value to our lives, and for praying for us in our journeys ahead.

Back from Istanbul!

We're back from our 5 days away, and will have pictures up of our trip soon. I (Marcus) also got to hike to the top of Mt. Sinai for sunrise a couple weeks ago, so I plan to post something on that also. Just need to get the pictures all uploaded.