Don & Geralynn Arrive Wednesday

Don & Geralynn arrived by mini van from the airport. Their flight was alittle late from NY as a passenger had missed the flight and all his luggage had to be off loaded. Making the flight late. but all in all, things went well, except there was a crying baby near Geralynn.

After a short rest we headed off to the Suleymmaniye Mosque. this is the grandest of all the mosques in Instanbul. After getting lost and touring the wrong mosque, we finally found the right mosque. Only to find that the Suleymaniye is closed for restoration and will be closed for all of 2010. We did get to tour some of the grounds around the mosque. It was a beautiful mosque, and the grounds were huge. The mosque was built in about 1557 as the imperial mosque. The mosque, had a hospital, soup kitchen, schools, bath house. they fed over 1000 of the city's poor, Christian, Jew, Muslim it didn't matter.

Pictures starting with the red mosaic and then the mosque are of Suleymaniye. Tonight we meet as a group and meet our tour leader and find out our tour itenary and all the little details about our trip. Orientation is at 7pm and dinner at 8pm. I'm watching TV as I do this and it a Chinese station in English. I haven't found a good English station at this hotel. At the other hotel there were four different English stations. Oh well, TV is my last choice for entertainment. Tomorrow we'll have a full day, Don & Geralynn will be doing some of the things I've already done, so we'll start out with the things I haven't done and then split off.

I have a package to mail home, as always I've brought too much and want to get rid of it early. I went by UPS this morning to see how much it would cost. it weighed 7lbs and would cost $201.00....wow I said. I left and said I'd go to the Post Office. They did give me a box free, that was nice of them. More pictures is my picasa album: http://picasaweb.google.com/lowdivideroad/sultanhnetmosqueDG