Gigi and Bearpaw travels

April 22, 2026 Today was very uneventful.  It was a moving day.  We woke a little later than normal (whatever that is), had a leisurely breakfast, put our luggage in the designated place, hopped on the shuttle, and checked aboard the Viking Jupiter. We must say that the port authority building Viking uses in Istanbul is the cleanest port authority building we have ever been in.  It was immaculate.  So I’m guessing that it is fairly new. We were on shuttle number four to travel to the ship.  The lower the shuttle number the earlier you were allowed to check in.  We met another couple, from Australia, that was supposed to be on bus number nine.  We were having a good conversation when the agent came by to tell us that shuttle number four was ready to load.  Being the smart aleck that I am, I asked if we could have them bumped up to shuttle four.  Someone must have thought I was important because they were put on shuttle number four.  I rea...

April 21, 2026 Today started like nearly every other vacation day.  We woke up, got dressed, and had breakfast.  Afterward we headed out for another tour of the city. On the way to the Blue Mosque we stopped in the area that used to be a Roman hippodrome, the horse racing arena (think Ben Hur).  You could still tell where the track was located.  The grandstands of course are long gone and have been replaced by buildings, but you still got a sense of their location and the sheer size of the arena. Still located in the hippodrome area were a couple of original columns.  One was Roman and was built with blocks.  The other was Egyptian and was made of one large limestone column.  You could even tell where the original ground level was.  Over time the ground level has risen or filled in. There is an interesting story regarding the Egyptian column.  It was originally thirty meters tall but the largest ship of the day that could transport the column...

April 20, 2026 After breakfast we began our day with a bus ride through some of the city.  Istanbul dates back to roughly the fourth century BC and has had many names and many wars.  The most prevalent names have been Byzantium, Constantinople, and Istanbul.  Each time the area was conquered the victors got to rename the city if they so desired. We spent nearly the entire day in old Istanbul, which lies in Europe.  If you cross the Bosphorus you will be in Asia. Our day began at the Hagia Sofia, which was built some 1500 years ago when the city was called Constantinople.  It was the largest Christian church at the time.  When the Turks invaded and took over the city they named the city Istanbul and eventually changed the Hagia Sophia to a Mosque. The tour was disappointing as the building was being renovated both inside and out.  Scaffolding nearly covered the entire structure on the outside and massive scaffolding had been erected inside.  Furthe...

Travel Blog - Turkiye - Greece - 2026 April 18, 2026 Gigi and Bearpaw have headed out on yet another new adventure.  This trip will take us to two more countries and will also let Gigi check off another continent.  The countries are Turkiye (that’s the new spelling) and Greece.  Gigi will also get to check another continent off her list.  That would be Asia as part of Turkiye is in Asia and part of it is in Europe. Our day started early Saturday morning with a trip to the Airport to begin our first leg of our journey.  When we arrived we were told that our flight was running about 90 minutes late.  This would be a challenge as our layover in Dallas was only about two hours.  That would give us less than thirty minutes to deplane, figure out at which terminal our connecting flight happened to be, and then travel around the Dallas airport to get to the gate. As it turned out, an earlier flight to Dallas was also going to be late.  A number of people...

October 6, 2025 and epilogue Today began like many other travel days.  Up before dawn and then off to the airport.  Luckily there was very little traffic.  Once we were checked in and our luggage on its way we made our way through an immigration check and then on to the ‘Punto de Control Carlos’, which is an Ecuadorian ‘Checkpoint Charlie’ (TSA check point).  We boarded the plane and in only a little over four hours we landed in Miami. The line at Miami customs was incredibly long and slow with only two lanes open (out of about thirty).  Gigi asked where the Mobile Passport Control lanes were since there was nobody manning them (they are supposed to be quicker as you fill out the immigration form on a phone app).  Once we were told where to go we hustled to those lines.  It only took about five minutes to clear. BUT WAIT!  YOUR CUSTOMS EXPERIENCE IS NOT OVER YET!  Yes, I was ‘randomly’ selected for a secondary screening.  The first quest...

October 1 through October 5, 2025 The Galapagos Islands have been inhabited since the 1500’s, mostly by travelers and pirates (Yarrr!).  In the 1860’s Charles Darwin made his trip to the Galapagos Islands and developed his theory of evolution, which in part states that animals will tend to adapt to their environment.  For example the Galapagos tortoise developed a taller neck opening in their shells to allow them to better reach low hanging fruit that their other tortoise cousins would not be able to reach. Our first day in Galapagos started with our arrival at the airport.  There are two main airports in Galapagos.  One in their capital city of San Cristobal, surprisingly called San Cristobal Galapagos airport.  We flew into the Seymour Galapagos airport on the island of Baltra.  Once we landed we disembarked and after climbing down a flight of stairs walked across the tarmac at the airport to the terminal.  We then waited for luggage to be brought in...