Rule #1
Always observe where you are walking or else you will fall flat on your face! Several people in the group have bit the dust. Luckily, I’m not one of them. I just hope that by stating this, I’m not jinxing myself. The ground is very uneven and there are holes and steps where you least expect them.

Energy conservation seems to be a theme;

The escalators in the mall only turn on when someone walks onto them.
The light in the hallways and stairwells come on as you walk into it and go off afterwards.
The room key goes into a holder on the walls and then you can use the lights and air conditioning. It all goes off when you take the key out.
The air-conditioning won’t work if the windows are open.
Quite a few houses have solar panels on their roofs to heat water tanks.
We saw a couple wind farms and personal wind turbines.
The shower must be short or the water will run out all over the bathroom
Recycling bins at the University
Blow dryer – the buttons must be held to use it, this gives your finger a work out!

Stray cats and dogs are all over the place, mostly cats. The dogs have their shots and are tagged. The cats appear to be well fed and there is food set out for them in many places.

Fun fact- The Mediterranean Sea is the White Sea in some languages. There are two theories about the name of the Golden Horn. Number one reason, the sun sets in the west and colors it gold, or because of all the money that flowed in on this waterway from all over the known world.

I’m attaching some random pictures. One is of the fish from the Seafood restaurant under the bridge. Some are of the excellent food we had at an Armenian restaurant and a few of the mosaics at a Greek Orthodox church now the Chora Museum, the bus doing a U-turn in the middle of traffic, Taksim Square, and an Afghan War rug woven in the 1980’s when they were fighting the Soviet Union. It has guns in it!

There is a picture of the old Byzantine wall and a place where the group, without a few of us chickens, climbed up.