July 20

Our 2 month journey is coming to a close.  We've really seen diverse areas and people and it's been an exciting experience.  Tomorrow we fly home and we expect nothing noteworthy so this will be my final post of this trip.  We awoke around 3:30am because our bodies were convinced it was 9:30 am as in Amsterdam, but we managed to drift off an on until 5:00.  It was overcast in Boston and we walked the Freedom Trail, a self walking tour through the historic North End of Boston where many of our Revolutionary War events took place.  We saw the Old North Church where the 2 lanterns were hung in April 1775 for the famous "One if by land, two if by sea" proclamation.  We also crossed the bridge to Charlestown and toured the USS Constitution, aka Old Ironsides", saw Paul Revere's house and several other historic places.  We stopped at an Italian restaurant for lunch and both of us had a delicious 1 1/4 pound chilled Maine lobster.  We wandered back towards the hotel and went through Fanuel Hall and other historic buildings in the area and then, after 5 hours of wandering, returned to our room to put our feet up and watch some of the British Open.  In a while we'll go out for a light dinner.  Tomorrow we fly Delta to Orlando and go home to 2 months of mail.

THE END

July 19

We were awake around 6:00am when there was a bright lightning strike followed immediately by a very loud thunderclap.  It was very close by and the power to a section of Amsterdam, including our hotel, was out.  Fortunately the room door locks are on batteries so we could go out.  We had Dutch breakfast (bread, cheese & ham) but no coffee in the concierge lounge.  Even the trams in the area were out of commission.  After 2 1/2 hours the power came back on and we had a sigh of relief knowing we wouldn't have to haul our luggage down the stairways to leave.  We took a taxi to Schiphol Airport and spent a couple of hours in the business class lounge before boarding our 3 hour Icelandair flight to Reykjavik.  The lamb loin lunch was excellent as was the accompanying wine.  We had a 2 hour layover in Icelandair's Saga Lounge where one of their standard snacks is smoked Iceland lamb on a slice of thin tortilla like bread which is chared on a grill.  It is one of my all-time favorite snacks and I indulge myself every time we're at that airport.  On the 5 hour flight to Boston we were served a delicious filet that was properly on the rare side of medium rare.  In other words, we ate and drank our way from Amsterdam to Boston.  We had our first try of using Global Entry through Customs & Immigration and it really is a speedy pass through.  We took a water taxi from the airport to the Marriott Long Wharf Hotel and checked in around 6:00pm.  It was midnight so far as our bodies were concerned, but we walked around and stayed awake until 9:00 to try to adjust to the time change.

July 18

As I mentioned in the previous post, we have been in Amsterdam many times and already have a plethora of photos, so I don't have city photos to add.  It rained off & on during the day as we walked to the Jordaan area and then to Leidseplein for lunch.  Yesterday at Hoppe we had ossenworst, Amsterdam's version of beef tartare with special spices, so today we had regular beef tartare and Dutch sausage.  The tartare was chopped rather than ground and it was excellent - one of the best ever.  While we were eating, the bicycle perking police came by and collected bicycles parked outside of the marked areas.  Bikes chained to a lamp post were no problem as they have a battery grinder to cut through them.  The waitress said that it costs around 100 Euros to reclaim a bike and many of the bikes aren't worth that much.  They put the bikes on a truck and hauled them away.  On the way back to the hotel we stopped at Wynand Fockink, a tasting bar dating from 1679 and a regular stop for us when in Amsterdam.  It's hidden in a narrow alley off the Dam Square  that goes from the right side of the Grand Hotel Krasnapolski to the Red Light District.  They have numerous liquers and genevers to taste.  The glass is filled to the top and you MUST bend over and take the first sip without touching the glass with your fingers.  We sampled some old favorites and tried a couple of new ones and bought a couple of bottles to take home.  We had also picked up some aged Dutch Gouda cheese, stroopwafels and chocolate to add weight to our bags.  Fortunately we're flying business class so we won't be overweight.  We ate in the concierge lounge since we weren't very hungry and it was raining again.

July 17
We wandered around Amsterdam visiting familiar places, stopped at Cafe Hoppe for lunch (a place I frequented when I lived here in 1964) and returned to the hotel to await the arrival of friends.  Henk Bovenschen & I became close friends in 1964 when I spent 7 months working at Woodward Governor's Netherlands plant.  Both of us were competition swimmers and I joined Henk's swim club, De Dolfijn.  Shortly after I left, Henk met his now wife Loes.  I saw a lot of both Henk & Loes in the 1980s when I was with Woodward in England and there were meetings between the Dutch & UK plants.  This was the first time Pat had met them.  They joined us in the concierge lounge for coffee and their son Willem, who is a lawyer for the Central Bank, also came by to visit with us.  Henk, Loes Pat & I went to an Argentine steakhouse for dinner and it was great spend time with them after many years apart. Since Pat & I have been here a few times, we didn't take any pictures to post.

July 16

We didn't spend any time in Istanbul other than going from the ship to the airport after the cruise, then from the airport to the Ritz Carlton after Cappadocia and finally from the Ritz to the airport to fly to Amsterdam.  We had been there before and were "toured out" so the only pictures we have are from the bus and hotel room.  We flew from Istanbul, through Zurich to Amsterdam and arrived in heavy rain and cool temperatures.  The walk from the Central Train Station to our hotel would have drenched us so we took a cab.  We checked in with enough time to go to the concierge lounge for a glass of wine (or two) before going to bed.

July 15
We visited an underground city, one of several in the area, was a refuge from invaders.  The cities were originally created and lived in by early settlers 5000 years ago and, in later times, by Christians escaping persecution.  The entrances were just large enough for cattle to enter the front rooms which were stables with niches chipped out of the walls at chest height to hold fodder.  The passageways were narrow, low ceiling and twisting and we had to bend over to transit many of them.  The passageways gradually went lower away from the surface.  Just beyond the stables was a narrow entry to the living areas with a large stone wheel which could be rolled to block the entry and stone columns on each side to block the wheel from being pushed inward.  There was a smaller stable area beyond the wheel to keep chickens & goats so, if they had to abandon the cattle, they still had meat & milk.  Most rooms had ventilation tubes carved from the ceiling to the surface and temperatures remained constant year around.  There was a large stores room with a large clay grain storage pot.  There was also a tunnel, which could be sealed off, to bring in large items and supplies from the surface.  One of the rooms was a winery.  The city was quite extensive and we didn't visit all the rooms, which would have taken more than one day.

We returned to the hotel to freshen up and collect our luggage and left at noon for the airport at Kayseri (the name means Caesar)  At Turkish airports you put your luggage on and carry-on items on a screening belt and go through security before going to check in.  After check in, you again go through security.  The airports aren't air conditioned and it was quite hot.  We arrived in Istanbul and checked into the Ritz Carlton, which was part of the package.  All plans to go out for dinner were dashed by the time we got to the hotel at 5:30pm in 100 degree temperatures.  After 2 weeks of intensive touring we all decided to take it easy, clean up and eat at the hotel.  We had been to Istanbul previously and opted not to take a tour.

July 15

We visited cave churches in the morning.  We couldn't take photos inside the churches which dated from the 3rd to 11th centuries AD, however parts of interiors of some were exposed because outer walls fell away during the 1953 earthquake.  There were crude religious frescoes in the older churches and quite elaborate ones in the later churches.  The 3rd century church had red clay frescoes on the entry and in the apse and the 11th century church had brilliant colored frescoes on the walls and ceiling, chronicling the birth, life, death & rising of Jesus.  All had a few graves in the entry, but they weren't burial graves, only viewing pits like caskets for the newly deceased.