Would you believe it snowed!

Istanbul, very beautiful city

Mausoleum of Ataturk,he was much loved by the people

Changing of the guard

Hand painting cramic vase, they actually paint every stroke by hand.

Well, the reason the blog didn't get done last night is because when we arrived at our hotel in Ankara one of our bags was missing. Unfortunately it was the bag Karen lent us containing the borowed computer, the tickets for the rest of our trip, presents bought in Venice and Rome etc. Initially I couldn't get any action buteventually the hotel and the tour guide phoned every room with people from our tour and visited the rooms where no one replied. We then went throught the hotels videos of the bags being unloaded (thankfully it was there) and then went throught the videos of each floor. By this time 3 hours had past and finally the bus driver phoned to say he found it in the trash. I'm not sure what really happened but we were very pleased to have it back. Cost me 5 years of my life I reckon.

So the bus has wifi which is awesome. Right now we are travelling across the salt lake plains between Ankara and Cappodocia. The road is very rough (unlike most of the roads here which are wonderful) so if there are any ttyping misttakees that is the reason:)

Yesterday we left early for Ankara. As we climbed higher the temperature dropped constantly and we climbed to about 1300 metres. Not much lower then the Pyrenes we went over in the south of France. Just before we stopped for lunch it started to snow!! This is apparently common at this time of teh year. The snow was quite heavy while we had lunch and there are 2 girls on the tour who had fun making a snow man. At this time we heard the news that the AB's beat Aust so we were the only ones who enjoyed lunch I think. There are about a dozen Aussies on the tour so we were appropriately subdued in our celebrations so as not to rub it in!!!

When we arrived in Ankara we visited the Hittite museum. Very interesting place. We also visited a ceramic place where we saw a demonstration of a master potter at work. Absolutely amazing. The skills are handed down through the generations and take decades to perfect.

We had a buffet dinner at the hotel last night. There were lots of small things to choose for entrees and it was a good opportunity to try some things that I had no idea what they were. I still don't know what most of them were but I have had some interesting new taste experiences.The cheese and wine are very good here and prices lots cheaper than Europe.

The hotel was lovely.  Two double beds in our room. Very flash.
The hotel in Istanbul was extremely noisey. We had very little sleep either night as it was surrounded by restaurants, and the noise was still going when we got up at 5.30 yesterday morning.

Strangely only 8 of our group stayed there and the other 29 stayed at a beautiful flash place about 15 mins away. I know how flash it was as we were initially taken there and then told there had been a mistake and taken to the other place. Not much fun and we also missed mixing with the group for the first couple of days.

So not too thrilled with the tour company yet, but the tour guide is very knowledgable and we have many wonderful places to visit yet.

We had cheese pancakes for lunch today. Was surprisingly good. A bit like a toasted chees sandwich. The other option was potato pancake.

Terrible news about the oil spill at the Mount. Just an unbelievable tragedy. We are hoping for the best possible outcome.