Day 17, June 25, 2014

Morris and Mellie took us to the airport from Dorcas's house.  We sat there till 2:10 am and finally boarded.  Flew over night (6 hrs) to Istanbul.  When we landed we went to an information booth to see about getting a taxi and there was another girl there getting info too.  We started talking to her and she asked if she could go with us because she was alone and she would pay half of the taxi.  At first, I thought it might be a scam or a plant to try to steal from us.  But it turned out she was a journalist from Brazil and lived in New York City.  Her name was Sherriann.  When she was in college in New York she was a personal shopper for Nick Nolte and his family.  She was very nice and helped Adam shop for Erica.  There is a pic of them haggling with a 12 year old boy I put on yesterday.  We got to know her well, and we all had a lot of fun together.  We had the taxi drive us to the Asia side of Turkey so we could say we went to 3 continents.  Then we went to the Blue Mosque.  It was definitely a tourist attraction, but I wasn't real impressed.  From there we walked to the World Bazar.  Probably the largest in the world. Adam went nuts buying stuff for Erica with our money.  Ha ha.  Erica, I've never seen him shop like this.  He was so particular and had to get it just right, so he used Nick Nolte's personal shopper topic out things for you.  So feel honored.  Finally, after thinking we had lost Adam and searching for him in this huge, huge place we found him looking for more stuff for Erica.  Then we took a taxi back to the airport and found a wifi cafe and got to check email and blog.  Then flew out at 6:10pm to Cairo.  Cairo is gigormous.  13 million people live here and it is 100 kilometers from top to bottom.  That's like Chattanooga stretching from where it is now to half way to Atlanta.  It took us about 1 1/2 hours to get to the hotel by taxi.  I have to give Gordon credit, he got us a good hotel to stay in here.  We have a bungalow.  It is not far from the pyramids.  We crashed in bed around 10:30 pm.

Sherriann and me.

Adam trying out for "Mr. Istanbul".

One of the 100 hallways of the Grand Bazar.

Adam carrying half of our luggage in Cairo airport.