TURKEY: CANAKKALE AND TROY

 June 25, 2026

It isn't very far from Istanbul to Çanakkale, a seaport city in northwestern Turkey on the Dardanelles Strait where it connects to the Aegean Sea. Çanakkale is the main base for visits to the ruins of the ancient city of Troy.

Visitors arriving via the marina are greeted by this impossible-to-miss version of the Trojan horse, a key figure in the epic poem the Aeneid by the Roman poet Virgil. There is no archaeological evidence that a giant wooden horse was ever built and/or used to trick the Trojans during wars that occurred around the late 13th or early 12th century BC. However, Virgil's story about a giant wooden horse, written more than 1,000 years after the war, has been passed down for over 2,000 years and has helped preserve the memory the Trojan War.

According to legend, the war was started by the abduction of a beautiful woman, Helen of Troy. But the Greeks were also interested in Troy's wealth, and after fighting for ten years and failing to conquer the city, they came up with a devious plan of hiding soldiers inside a large wooden horse and leaving the horse in front of the city gates, then supposedly sailing away in their ships. The next morning, the Trojans wheeled the horse inside the city walls and began celebrating their victory. After everyone got drunk and felll asleep, the Greeks climbed out of the horse, opened the city gates, and let in their army, which had not sailed away after all. The Greeks plundered the city and set it on fire. The story is retold in the American movie Troy (2004), starring Brad Pitt as the Greek hero Achilles. This model horse was used in that movie and has been on display in the marina since 2004.

Çanakkale has certainly figured out how to capitalize on Virgil's Trojan horse story. Without it, the city might not be quite as popular a tourist destination as it is now.

TURKEY 2026: ISTANBUL PART III -- FOOD TOUR

 June 24, 2026

One of the things we love to do when we travel is a food tour. Even if you think you know a lot about a country's cuisine, nothing beats walking around with a local and visiting some of their favorite places. 

We booked a food tour with an Istanbul native named Alp who works with a group called WithLocals. He was the perfect guide as he had a culinary arts background and a deep love for his hometown.  You can find him here. 

Our two remaining sisters and spouses were taking a day to recover from travel, so it was just Dave and Bonnie, Chris and Stan, and Bob and I again. Alp suggested we meet in Taksim Square, which was about a mile from our ship, and when we ventured out in the morning, we decided it was the perfect day for a walk. We located Taksim Square on our phones, set the GPS, and started out.

We'd walked a few blocks away from the docks and came upon an area full of fancy shops. This zebra outfit is especially lovely, don't you think? I wonder if the mask comes with the dress?

We enjoyed the walk and sea breeze for a few more blocks, but then our GPA led us away from the waterfront, and suddenly the terrain changed.

The ensuing route was full of steep flights of as many as 40 to 50 stairs, and since our group included our sister-in-law in a wheelchair, we looked for ways to bypass the stairs. We soon understood why there were stairs when the streets we took instead seemed to be going straight up. In a few places, Bonnie got out of the chair and managed a flight of stairs, but it was difficult for her, and so the  men banded together to help with the challenging ascent.

After about an hour of strenuous climbing, we finally reached Taksim Square--the highest point in Instanbul, which we had accessed from sea level. We were a little bit late, but Alp was waiting patiently for us.

TURKEY 2026: WALKING AROUND ISTANBUL PART II -- HAGIA SOPHIA MOSQUE AND THEODOSIUS CISTERN

 June 23, 2026

The Hagia Sophia (Greek for "holy wisdom") was built between 532 and 537 by order of Justinian the Great as the cathedral of Constantinople. For more than 500 years, it was the largest church in the world. It was rebuilt after an earthquake in 994 and used as an Eastern Orthodox or a Catholic cathedral until 1453. In 1453 after the Ottoman's conquered Constantinople, Sultan Mehmed turned Hagia Sophia into a mosque and added minarets. It became known as the Aya Sofya. 

The secularist government led by Kemal Ataturk turned the mosque into a museum in 1935. During World War II, the minarets housed machine guns. Over the succeeding decades, the building fell into serious disrepair, but preservationists worked to restore it from 1997 to 2006

This is my photo of the Hagia Sophia taken when we visited Istanbul in 2010 when it was still a museum. I think there were still minarets, but they are outside the boundaries of this photo.

By 2010 they had uncovered many of the early Christian mosaics on the wall that had been stuccoed over during the years the structure was a mosque. We were very excited to see them.

In 2020, Turkish President Erdogan announced that the museum would once again revert to being a mosque. This controversial decision brought on global criticism. Even UNESCO was upset. However, the government dcreed that it would be a "working mosque," open to anyone, and the Christian icons and mosaics on the walls would be protected.

In 2025, an extensive restoration project began, and a year later, we showed up in Istanbul. Here is what the Hagia Sophia looked like:

Not quite the gorgeous structure we had seen 16 years before, but I'm sure all this renovation will be worth it in the end.

The interior is cavernous and lacks the elegance of the Blue Mosque, which was built much later and basically replaced this one for centuries.

TURKEY 2026: WALKING AROUND ISTANBUL, PART I -- THE OBELISK OF THEODOSIUS AND THE BLUE MOSQUE

 June 22-23, 2026

We had a full day before we had to board our ship, so the Joneses, Kenisons, and I (Bob was away for the day on a birding trip with a guide) planned a walking tour of Istanbul. Bob and I had previously visited Istanbul  in 2010 (those blog posts begin here), and 16 years is a long time. The city felt different--in some ways more modernized, in other ways more restored to its ancient past.

We walked from our hotel to Topkapi Palace, built in 1459, six years after the Ottoman Empire captured Constantinople, then the capital of the Byzantine Empire. In its heyday, the Sultan's harem lived here, along with state officials. However, it was basically abaondoned as a residence in the 17th century, although it did retain government-related uses. In the mid-19th century, the sultan moved the court out as well, but the palace continued to serve as a treasury, library, and mint. After the end of the Ottoman Empire in 1923, Topkapi Palace became a museum, which it has continued to be to the present day.

Unfortunately, the palace itself is NOT wheelchair friendly. (Hooray for the Americans with Disabilities Act that requires ramps and elevators in public places. I really notice the lack of equal access in foreign countries.) We enjoyed a walk around the grounds anyway.

This is the Hagia Irine, originally built in the 4th century during the riegn of Emperor Constantine, making it one of the earliest Christian churches in Constantinople/Istanbul. It was one of only two churches never converted into a mosque. These days it is a museum and concert hall.

The Imperial Gate, one of three ceremonial gates at Topkapi Palace, was commissioned in 1478 and reconstructed in 1867.

TURKEY AND GREECE 2026: A MIRACULOUS TRIP

 June 2026

In 2025, after our trip to Uganda with our granddaughter, we planned a return trip to Uganda in July 2026 with one of Bob's law partners and his wife with the specific purpose of going gorilla trekking. We set up our tours, purchased our flights, and were ready to go.

My brother and his wife and my sister and her husband had planned a trip together--a Viking ocean cruise from Instanbul to Athens in late June 2026. One day in spring during a family chat my sister-in-law shared their travel plans and said, "Anyone who wants to come along is welcome to join us." Within days my other two sisters and their spouses had joined the cruise. At that time our Uganda plans were set and we could not afford the time nor the money to do two large trips in one summer. I was feeling really sad to be the only sibling left out of all the family fun.

HOWEVER . . . 

The ebola virus hit the Democratic Republic of the Congo early in the year, the country bordering the area of Uganda we had planned to visit, and a few cases spread into Uganda. We watched and waited, and even though the risk to us would be low, we were pretty sure the outbreak would affect our trip.

Map of Ebola outbreak. The Democratic Republic of the
Congo, where most of the ebola outbreaks have
occurred, is the large country to the west of Uganda.

NEW YORK CITY 2026: THE MET

 June 1, 2026

On my last day in New York City, I met A at Elbow Bread for one last strawberry lemon sheep's cheese Danish (my third one in three days), and then he went off to work and I was on my own.

I'm starting to feel a lot more confident in the city, and I was able to find my way via subway and walking to my next destination. The subway took me to the west side of Central Park, and then I walked through the park to the east side, passing by this deliightful bronze sculpture of Prospero and his daughter Miranda from Shakespeare's The Tempest, appropriately located in front of the theater that is home to the summer Shakespeare in the Park festival.

I eventually made it to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, fondly called "The Met," the fifth largest art museum in the world by gallery space. (In case you are wondering, #1 is the Louvre in Paris, #2 is the British Museum in London, #3 is the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, and #4 is the National Museum of China in Beijing). Last year it had 5.7 million visitors, making it the most-visited museum of any kind in the United States.

The Met has a permanent collection of 1.5 million works grouped in seventeen separate departments. I only had a few hours, so I decided to start in the European section and see how far I got from there.

NEW YORK CITY 2026: MUSEUM OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK, A BIT OF CENTRAL PARK, AN ART OPENING, AND MOMBAR'S

 May 31, 2026

MoMA is a tough museum to top. With its 708,000 square feet, there is so much to see that you can spend an entire day there, and its eclectic collection has something for everyone. We followed our visit to MoMA with a visit to the Upper East Side Museum of the City of New York, a relatively puny 113,750 square feet. In spite of its small size, it contained one of the most expansive artworks I have ever seen: He Built This City (2004-2025) by Joe Macken, a work that rivaled almost anything in MoMA.

In 2004, New York truck driver Joe Macken began a little project in his basement that he worked on in his free time for the next 21 years: a scale-model of the entire city of New York. He had no prior artistic training, no building experience other than constructing a few miniature models, just a vision of his beloved city in miniature. He began with a single structure--30 Rockefeller Plaza. Using a scale of 1 mm = 10 feet and balsa wood, an X-acto knife, his home ruler, Elmer's Glue, and acrylic paint, he expanded from Rockefeller Plaza to Midtown Manhattan, then to the whole borough, then to Queens, Brooklyn, the Bronx, and Staten Island. After 21 years of work, he had created a 1,350 square-foot replica of NYC that includes every street, every building, every park, every bridge. Iconic buildings such as the Empire State Building, the World Trade Centre, the Chrysler Building, and the Woolworth Building are incredibly detailed.

In 2025, Macken's TikTok posts of his project went viral, accumulating over 10 million views. The Museum of the City of New York took notice, and the rest is history.

Mr. Macken's model is simply spectacular. Photos don't do it justice.

View from north end

View from south end