Eyes of an Angel

Adopting the puppy Hera greatly reduced our ability to travel for the time being. We are waiting for her to grow a bit. However, in the mean time we were satisfying ourselves with short excursions in the city. Now we have to stop doing that due to an unexpected injury. While playing with Hera, hubby fell down and injured his knee. His MRs are showing some damage in the cartilage and in order to avoid surgery he has to stay in bed for the coming 10 days. While this give me the chance to play the naughty nurse ,books, DVDs, internet, and TV along with the pouring rain outside make it easier to stay inside.

For this week we had actually decided to visit Hagia Sophia, one of the greatest remains from the Byzantine era, to look into the eyes of an angel.
Hagia Sophia, built by the Byzantine emperor Justinian between 532 and 537 A.D., was originally a basilica before it was converted into a mosque when Ottoman Turks conquered the city in 1453. During the conversion process, the Ottomans covered the mosaics with plaster instead of removing them. The building was turned into a museum in 1934.

Many mosaics of the emperors and empresses were keep amazing the millions of visitors since then, but a photo I saw in the news during July practically took my breath away. It was the photo of an recently uncovered angel. Its six winged figure said to represent the angel Seraphim, guardian of God's throne. Since our return to İstanbul, I was dying to see Seraphim with my own eyes but it looks like I have to wait some more.
I remember telling you that I have a deep love and hate relation with this city. To live side by side with such a rich history is one of the reasons of my love..

1st photo is from here

Happiness

I think one of my biggest contribution to our marriage and happiness is to create this office place for us. This place is the extension of our kitchen, normally designed for a dinner table.

As you know I am retired and, my husband is semi retired so when we are at home we love to spend time on internet. We have our blogs, games and hubby has his own on line bridge partners. When I realize that we spent so much time seperate from each other, I designed this space. Now we are together all the time. We talk,watch TV, help each other and usually have the breakfast here.

Our desk is usually crowded with papers,various gadgets, used plates and cups but for today I tried to tidy it up a bit.
So welcome to our kitchen office....

İstanbul Photo Contest

Today I came across with this photo contest about İstanbul. These are the results of 2008 and appereantly there is another one going on for 2009.

You could reach the site from www.istanbulphotocontest.com/winners.php and while you are there please check the exhibition photos. If I had a chance to vote, my vote could go someone else. and hey!! I know some of you already visited İstanbul, why dont you join the new contest..

Updates..

I LOVE receiving comments but sometimes I am quite late in answering some of your questions. So this post will be about some updates and questions I neglected to answer..



1) HERA - our dear puppy... I know some of you asked about her health but as we were not sure how she was doing for a while, I waited a bit. Now I can happily tell you that she had an almost clean bill of health from her vet, she is doing quite fine. Nowadays she is like a walking pee machine and so far we couldnt tell her that its OK to pee outside. When she has pee, she barks and cries to go home so that she can pee to a newspaper. We are working full time to reverse this habit. She is our little sun shine..

2) GUVEN ILTER - Last month I posted some wonderful İstanbul photos of my friend Guven. He has finally started a website where you can see more of his photograps. Please see more of his photograps and posts at http://web.me.com/guven

3) CHERRY LIQUEUR - During the festival of sweets, I mentioned about my home made cherry liqueur. So here is the receipe if you want to try it.

Put 2 kilograms of cherry, 1/2 kg of sugar, couple cinnamon sticks and cloves to a big jar and then add 1,5 litres of vodka. Keep it in a dark and cool place for 2-3 months and then enjoy it. I usually add one more bottle of vodka after it is done. Sugar and the vodka level is rather depends on the taste..

For the last weekend I also made a cherry cake. As you will have 2 kg of vodka soaked cherries after a while why not use your imagination. Although a big slice could make you a bit dizzy, it was delicious. :))

Decoration in Bhutan

Reminder to dear readers: This is probably an x rated post in some parts of the world so read at your own risk :))

I love reading and looking at everything about decoration. Books, magazines, sites, blogs you name it... There are some good stuff and there are some bad stuff, depends on the taste. But more or less you are seeing the same type of houses almost everywhere. Some are for the low budget, some for the budgets that I can not imagine..But how about being different, bold and brave in decorating your house??? All these terms again could be for the western eyes but today let me take you to Kingdom of Bhutan for some different decorative elements.

I have travelled to this country in the year 2000. I will probably write more about this jewel in the future but today lets start with houses. Traditional Bhutanese houses are very well made and decorated with vibrant designs like animals, flowers or some religious figures.

However there were some folks who decorated their houses with the signs of abundance..

The other day Miss Footloose posted a beautiful quote on her lovely blog from Mark Twain. '' Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow mindedness'' and this traveller posing in front of the Bhutanese mountains was probably thinking along these lines in those days..

Last Days of Summer..

Yesterday was another beautiful day. We took our daily walk at the sea side. Amazingly we came across we some brave souls who decided to enjoy the sun shine and sea together.


I call them brave because it's already October and its not the ideal time of the Marmara Sea to swim. It should be rather cold. They also got another ribbon of bravery from me as they have the courage to swim in the contaminated waters of Marmara. Being an inland sea, Marmara is the life blood of İstanbul, however years of neglect left its once turquoise waters pretty dirty, especially in the shores of İstanbul..

As for us, we already adopted ourselves to autumn and like to watch the falling leaves.... Have a great weekend and enjoy the season whichever you are living in..

Buyukada - Princess Islands

For the last two days the weather in Istanbul is fantastic.Just like summer. But I think these are the very last of the good weather days as TV news started to show the snowy scenes from the eastern parts of the country. So we decided to take a very small vacation as we could not leave the puppy alone for a very long time. So all we needed was a 45 minutes of sailing to feel a bit of holiday time on an ordinary day..Destination is Buyuk Ada - Big Island. Largest of the 9 so called Princess islands in the Marmara Sea. So take a boat..

When you reach the island you have to find yourself a way of transportation if you want to explore the island. Easiest one is to rent a horse carriage, but if you feel fit to do it you could also rent a bicycle. Motorized vehicles are forbidden. Well, as we are a bit lazy, we chosed to rent a carriage.For almost 2 hours we either enjoyed the beautiful scenery or the lovely houses

For a late lunch before returning to the city, A glass of wine with a simple fish dish is the best alternative to end the trip. So in almost 5 hours we had a lovely vacation..