Many of you have been asking to see photos from our recent trip to Italy, Greece, Turkey, and Egypt with Rebecca and her parents.  I've put them all up on Photobucket, so you can look at the album.  It works best when viewed as a slideshow.  Now you can see what I was talking about in the previous blogs. http://s905.photobucket.com/albums/ac260/KevinJAnderson/ KJA
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Leaving Istanbul, we had a short stop at the Greek island of Mykonos.  We boarded one of the ship’s small boats, or tenders, and rode to shore. I hadn’t heard much about the island before, but Mykonos was quite a pleasant surprise, featured on many postcards and calendars -- tightly packed whitewashed houses, blue roofs, steep streets, and picturesque windmills.  We stopped at a dockside café to have lunch…which turned out to be the best meal we’ve had on the entire cruise.  Sitting outside, we ordered a wide range of local dishes and enjoyed every single one:  olives, Greek salad,...
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Byzantium/Constantinople/Istanbul -- I’ve wanted to see this place since I was a kid reading adventure stories…the epitomy of exotic lands.  Photos of the jaw-dropping Blue Mosque on the harbor with its piles of domes and fairy-tale minarets inspired a lot of my fiction, particularly recent books like Crystal Doors: Sky Realm and the Terra Incognita novels. And the city certainly didn’t disappoint.  As the ship pulled in at sunrise, I went off to get coffee for us, and I saw the giant orange sun rising out of the mists on the eastern horizon.  From our cabin balcony, we watched the...
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