I know, it's been two months! What can I say... the last two months have been split into "BT" and "AT" ... before trip and after trip. Cory and I went on a two week cruise to Turkey, Greece & Egypt the second half of September, and never before have I had to do so much preparation and deal with so much anxiety before a trip! But we did it, and it was awesome, and we're absolutely thrilled to have it be over with. ;) So, shockingly, I'm going to be blogging some pictures that aren't of Audrey! I don't know if i've ever done that before... Audrey had a great time, by the way, with her two grandma's who stepped in to shower her with love and attention while we were gone. We missed her tons, and since we got back last Thursday, we've been spoiling her even more than they did!
Anyway, for the whole 318 pictures, you can see my flickr album at this link But I'll blog a few with descriptions and all...

We started out in Istanbul; this is the Blue Mosque. We finally found it (after hours just wandering the streets), and were disappointed when we couldn't go in because it was prayer time. We were visiting in the middle of Ramadan, so tourist access was limited. It's supposed to be gorgeous inside! But the outside was just as impressive.

This is the Grand Bazaar, a maze of shops in Istanbul - you'd think I'd be in shopping heaven, but every other shop is a carpet place that gives you complimentary apple tea and Turkish delight, trying to get you to spend thousands on a carpet which they'll ship for free! We spent too much time avoiding these guys...

Our next port was Izmir in Turkey. We took a cruise excursion to see some ancient ruins about 30 mi outside the port. This is me learning something...

Us at the ruins of Pergamon... it was a very interesting trip, although we had to deal with more carpet strongman tactics on the way back , since that's where our bus stopped for us to go potty. Then, the driver got lost on the way back to the ship, so we were winding through the narrow streets of Izmir, and the bus actually got stuck on a turn. It was entertaining!

Our next port was Mykonos, and we rented a scooter to shoot around the island all day. It was awesome!!

Here's the beach we hung out at for a few hours... since it was the first beach we hit, we hadn't purchased sun screen yet, so we thought we'd just find a hut on the beach that would have some. Yeah, it was 23 Euros!! For those of you that don't know how much the dollar has been sucking, that's like $30. for suncreen. Well, we didn't get sunburned, so I guess it was worth it.

As you can tell, Mykonos was gorgeous, and the main town was awesome - cute little boutiques and great food. The streets are all narrow little alleyways that you immediately get lost in, so we literally walked for hours just trying to find our way out. It took us forever to find out where we parked our scooter! Our ship stayed in port that night till 11:30pm, so we got the chance to go out to dinner and really enjoy the town!

Our next port was Santorini, another awesome Greek island. On our side of the island, all of the towns are on the tops of these huge clifs, so our choices were to take a tram up (which, luckily, we were the first people off the ship this morning, so we avoided the long lines!), or you could ride a donkey up the switchback trail on the right. On our way back to the ship, the line to take the tram down was so long, that we opted to walk the trail down the hill. It just smelled of donkey excrement, plus we had to deal with a group of Japanese tourists on donkeys that couldn't control them very well!

This is the gorgeous town of Oia, on the cliffs of Santorini. More great shopping and food, not to mention the scenery!

We rented a convertible bug on Santorni to see the sites - the first place we went was this black sand beach to have a swim before seeing the rest of the island.

Cliff walkin' Cory...
Alrighty folks, I'm going to have to do the rest later. I haven't even gotten to Egypt, and that's gonna take a while! The country definately had some stuff to see, and we took pictures of it all since we're pretty certain we'll never be back. Ever. Despite all precautions, we both got sick, and up until yesterday I was still dealing with the aftermath. I can forgive a country for having different parasites and bugs than we do, but that on top of getting shook down for money every time you go to the bathroom (which is often when you get sick!) as well as the Giza mobs selling postcards and lame headresses at all the sites, it kinda soured the whole trip. But it was sumtin to see, I know. I'll post those pics later... I've got to get my rest, since my vacation will officially be over tomorrow as I enter the wild world of Revolution Foods again!!
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