BIRTHDAY BUS

Thanks to all of you for so many birthday emails and electronic cards.  I will see the mailed cards you sent, when I get home around Thansgiving, so it will be a birthday/Thanksgiving card.

For my birthday I treated myself to a Kamil Coc bus ride from Antalya to Izmir to catch my flight to Athens.  The steward on the bus remembered my birthday with a glazed birthday cookie.  Attending my surpise bus birthday party were about 40 other souls with whom I could not talk to, but seemed happy enough to be on my birthday bus.


BAD GIRL MANNEQUIN

I  saw this mannequin, appropriately wearing her head scarf but taking a hint from the Scandinavians and going topless.   The other mannequins look on disapprovingly.

 Leaving a topless mannequin in the window  is not a correct thing to do in Turkey.  But perhaps she is a rebellious "bad girl" mannequin.

This "bad girl" mannequin reminded me of my head scarf story from my last trip to Istanbul.    , I saw a young woman with a head scarf.  Wearing a head scarf connotes a certain sense of modesty.  However this young lady was also wearing a very, very tight blouse, and the jeans were tight also.  My sense was that it mattered little that she wore a head scarf, since she was a well-endowed woman, attention immediately went to her chest.  I thought that the head scarf would have been put to better use to cover her size "D" girls.  Do they make a scarf for the breasts, or is that what a burka is for???

HAPPY ANNIVERSARIES

Best wishes to Sherry and Mario and Anna and Dan.  I was reminded , in seeing  many brides during my Saturday walk in the park.  There were seeing  at least six different couples.  Here is a sampling, of looking into each other's eyes, the flyaway veil, and the bunny holding couple.  Is bunny holding at a wedding ceremony   a Turkish custom to suggest having many children, remembering the breed like rabbits expression???.

CHANGE OF PLANS

I had planned to visit Croatia, but this has not worked out.  It is difficult and/or expensive to get to Dubrovnik from Corfu (Greece); and the ferries from Bari and Brindisi in Italy may not be running to Dubrovnik, perhaps having shut down for the winter.  It is the rainy season in the Adriatic and it seems not enough people travel the route to keep it open.

I opted to fly to Athens.  Spend a few days in central and northern Greece , before flying out from Thessaloniki to Girona, Spain which is near Barcelona and the French border.