Marci and Steve Go Back to Europe

From Mayhem to Magic, Bombs to Break Fast - an incredible Islamic Yom Kippur  We awoke this morning bright and early with the iPad alarm  at 7:00 , or so we thought until we realized, oops, it was not set to automate the time change to Turkey and now we were one hour late for breakfast and then services for Yom Kippur. We hurried through the breakfast on the rooftop terrace and hopped on the T1 tram to Karakoy.     Turkish Tram Tokens---PLASTIC!! One stop, two stops, three stops....and then an announcement in Turkish we don't understand but then we realize everyone has gotten off the tram. What could be going on? The transit police simply said....problem with the tram, no money back, bye bye. We walked down a block or two and lo and behold, the entire street is roped off with police tape.  I, being the more cautious type, am concerned there is something odd going on. Steve, ex-auxiliary cop, is fearless and ready to taxi through the blockade.  No, I s...

An Islamic Call to Prayer on Yom Kippur Turkish Airlines, how exotic. Flying to Istanbul and expecting to feel a bit like crossing Gibraltar to Tangiers years ago. We fly in a roomy Airbus, and are served lunch on a two hour flight! We arrive and for the first time ever, we are looking for someone holding up a sign with our name and we spot him, a young man, and the sign says Marli Schwartz. We are whisked to a car, complete with a small Turkish rug, and forty five minutes later we arrive, near but not quite at our hotel. We are stuck close by in a traffic jam.   Our driver makes a quick call and then stops. The driver opens our door and the bellhop from our hotel magically appears, to carry our luggage and walk us to the hotel about a block away, no use waiting for traffic to clear, it could be while and there is an entire BIG city waiting to be explored. As we register, we are served apple tea and the requisite Turkish Delight , juicy and pistachio laden. We quickly dump our stuf...

Plitvice Lakes,  Rainout and Blackout About 90 minutes into our drive from Zadar to Plitvice Lakes, we are up in the mountains again, this time, the interior of Croatia. It is green and beautiful as we roll past some old tanks from the war and wonder again, just how close are we to all of those unexploded thousands of land mines still left lying around.  The mountain scenery is a bit eerie with smoky, foggy, misty looking clouds with the mountain peaks popping out above making us feel on top of the world, albeit not a sunny one. We roll into Grabovac, right up to our Turista Hotel which turns out to be half hotel, half campsite. There are tents and camper vans and RVs and wooden cabins, #118 just for us.  >>>Stock Photo- NOT this nice day when we arrive! Our reception hostess walks us to our cabin, opens the door and as she is leaving casually remarks, 'oh, tomorrow we will have no electricity from 8 - 5, the whole area had a problem and they need to fix it'. It ...

The Magic Bells of Sukosan (and stayed tuned below for the WTF #7 Answer) Tuesday night , a quick walk around the harbor to recon the two pizzerias in town for dinner. We choose the 'green chair' Mjav and share a plain with onions vowing to make the next few days a bit lower key for food. I even goes sans alcohol before we head home (which we can see from our dinner table) and fall asleep, setting the alarm for  seven am . Sleeping like a dead person, as usual, Steve wakes me  at two am  to the sound of the church bells, only 100 meters away, ringing loud and clear and non-stop. We step outside to lots of lightening and thunder and the bells keep ringing. We have no idea what is going on. We think perhaps there is an emergency, a fire, or another Balkan revolution, but the baker next door is hard at work on his bread and pastry for the morning, so we figure nothing is really amiss. And the bells keep ringing and ringing and ringing, so LOUDLY that I am not sure how we act...