good talk

This past Spring I flew from Ben Gurion in Israel to Istanbul (Israel has heated up since I was there, probably chaotic). This was my third time in Turkey and I've always found it to be a fabulous destination. My last time there had been 7 years before and it had cost a whopping $60 for the visa that you get automatically on arrival but this time it was only $20, the first time I was there was 17 years ago and the visa was free, that was more like it---hey, you go to these foreign places and you spend all this money so why would they gouge you for a visa? And now they have a subway system to get you from the Airport to where all the attractions are. In Istanbul most things that you'd want to see are within walking distance of each other. And I got a hotel room including breakfast for 30 Euros, that's cheap by the standards and it was close to everything. But 7 years before the prices were half of what they are today due to disastrous economic policies everything has gone up. And previously I've always found the Turks to be very friendly and now they were unfriendly. I asked why and was told it was because the people have no money (so keep your problems to yourselves and don't take it out on me). So I leave my hotel and walk to the Hagia Sophia, finished in 536 by the Emperor Justinian for almost a thousand years it was the largest building in the world and of course the largest Cathedral. It's very impressive. Once I was finished there I went to the "Blue Mosque," the only Mosque in Islam that has 6 Minarets. Built by the architect Mehmet Aga for the Sultan Ahmet it was completed in 1616. The tiles inside are blue hence the nickname, it has iron bars running throughout to guard against earthquakes, it's very beautiful. The Hippodrome is a large area outside the Blue Mosque and it has a gory History. Twice 40,000 people were slaughtered within the Hippodrome, which was bigger in those days, once in 532 by Justinian to save his throne and again in 1826 when 40,000 Janissaries (the Turks' best soldiers) met their fate there. There's a great archeological museum to see close by and other museums. This entire tourist area is on the peninsula known as the Golden Horn and you can walk across a bridge going from Asia on one side to Europe on the other. The next day I went to the Topkapi Palace which was the palace of the Ottoman Sultans from 1465 to 1863. There's fabulous things to see here and you'll be there for quite some time. One of the mosques I went to was that of Suleiman the Magnificent who ruled from 1520 to 1566 and his tomb is outside the mosque. Istanbul began when Constantinople was captured by Mehmet ll (the Conqueror) in 1453 after a 53 day siege, it had been on the downslide for a long time. Since the end of WW ll Turkey has been a great friend of the United States, when NATO was going strong the U.S. had the largest Army in it and Turkey had the 2nd largest. And how many people of Turkish descent have you ever met in the United States? Unlike other nationalities they don't leach us.