Liya’s Programmers’ Potluck. One of the last events of the fifth grade year is an evening at the school, when the kids show off video games they made in Technology class. Liya made a game called Unwebbed, in which the player needs to guide a bee to various flowers while avoiding spiders and their webs.
Anya wants a chance to bike to school with Jan too (after Bree went a few weeks ago), so the two of them ride to school this morning. Anya’s got the hang of her big bike now, and the ride goes quickly. She reluctantly agrees to pose for a photo to commemorate the ride, but shows that she doesn’t have to be happy about it.
Bree’s kindergarten class holds an early Father’s Day celebration. The kids sing songs, enjoy ice cream (at 9:30 am!), take the dads back to the classroom, share some drawings and other projects, then play with the dads on the playground for recess.
Jan tries out our new hammock. (We need a new free-standing one in preparation for the eventual removal of our cherry tree, which previously anchored a hammock.) Hammocks have a curious magnetic effect on the children: if you get into a hammock, one of girls will instantly run out of the house and jump in.
The girls’ school holds their year-end carnival. Bree’s a bit hesitant to try the midway games, but she tries one and gets a few prize tickets. When she sees that she can get (slightly) better prizes with more tickets, she plays a bunch more games. Here she’s trying to flip bean-bag frogs onto a lily pad.
Liya, meanwhile, does what she always does: play all the midway games to figure out which pays out the best, then play that game over and over. This year, she figures out the knack of a game that involves rolling a small bowling bowl up and down a little track. She plays that until she has a fistful of tickets. After redeeming a few for candy, she gives most of them away to her friend Kira.
Anya spends much of the time at the carnival at the sanctioned area for squirt-gun fighting. By the time we’re ready to go, she is absolutely, sopping wet.
As an early Father’s Day gift, Anya orchestrates an afternoon canoe trip with Jan out of the U.W. boathouse. The day turns out to be perfect. Morning clouds have just parted, so it’s sunny, but there are very few people out on the water. We see great blue herons 7 or 8 times (probably the same ones multiple times), and get to see one of them snatch a fish for lunch. There are also: turtles galore, a bald eagle, and several large duck families with half-grown ducklings. We stop to find a geocache in the marsh (where Anya consents to have her profile photographed), and Anya finds it instantly. We also find there a sunken car tire, and wrestle it into the canoe to take it out of the wetlands. All in all, a nice paddle.
Anya eschews traditional breakfast foods. We tell her that she has to eat something. Breakfast possibilities for her include chips and salsa (which is arguably about as a healthy as a bowl of Honey Nut Cheerios) and chicken soup (which is likely healthier). One morning, Jan finds her eating a breakfast of Nilla Wafers, and tells her that’s over the line.
Europe Trip, Day 1: Seattle to New York. We leave Seattle to begin a long vacation in Europe, the centerpiece of which is a cruise from Istanbul to Rome. We start with a flight to New York City to see family for a couple of days. We spend the first night of our vacation at a curiously over-designed Crowne Plaza Hotel at JFK airport.
Day 2. We rent a car and drive up to Old Lyme, CT, to see Marlee. Stephen meets us there, and brings lunch for everyone. It’s a beautiful day, and it’s good to hang out on Marlee’s porch. She hasn’t seen us for about 6 years, and it’s nice to give her a chance to see the growing girls. It’s also nice for the girls to see Marlee and refresh their memory of her. (Bree, of course, only recognizes her from photos.) It’s also great for the girls to see their Uncle Stephen again. He joins Jan and the girls for a short walk down a nearby mill stream.
In the late afternoon, we say our farewells and pile back in the car. We head to Pleasantville, NY, to see Jan’s step-sister Anne, her husband Jon, and their kids Henry and Katie. Everything’s fine as we head west on the tree-lined Merritt Parkway, but shortly after we get off the parkway, Jan’s phone — which we’ve been using as a GPS — dies. Angela tries to get directions on her phone, but can’t get a signal. We resort to something we haven’t done in years: stopping at a gas station and asking for directions.
We still get to Pleasantville in time for dinner. The girls immediately hit it off with their cousins Henry and Katie. This happens partly because all four girls start building a fort in the attic using the pillows, mattresses, and other bedding that’s been set out for us to sleep on. Henry attacks it, presenting himself as a common enemy the girls can unite against.
At dinner, the girls sit together at the kitchen counter, while Henry gets a place at the adult table. After dinner, we walk a few minutes to the Pleasantville village for frozen yogurt. When we get back, the girls have to disassemble their complex fort so that the five of us all have something to sleep on.
Before coming, we’d heard from Stephen and Jon that Marlee has begun showing signs of memory loss. We’re saddened to see this is playing out. She’s happy to see us, and recognizes us, but easily loses the thread of a conversation. At one point, she asks Jan for Sabriya’s name again. We see various reminders she’s made to herself that we’re coming: on the calendar, on the door, on the counter. Perhaps the most striking sign of memory loss is that the freezer is full of frozen food. Marlee, a home cook par excellence, no longer cooks. We’re glad Stephen is there, as Marlee seems most comfortable when she’s just listening to the rest of us catch up. Anne’s taking Marlee for an MRI the following week to get a diagnosis, but it will most likely confirm progressive loss of memory and function. This is probably the last time we’ll visit her at her home (8 Griswold Ave, Old Lyme), where she’s lived for over twenty years.
Day 3. We get up early so we can say goodbye to Henry and Katie before they head off to school. (Their school doesn’t let out for another week.) Jan and the girls join Jon in walking Henry and Katie to school; a short while later, Jon himself has to head to work. We hang out with Anne for the morning, have pizzas delivered for lunch, then say goodbye before we drive back to JFK for the flight to Istanbul.
The airport gate is quite crowded. The airline has converted all the gate seating into little tables with iPads bolted to them, which is probably nice but only provides seats for about half the passengers. We finally manage to get a seat or two. Angela strikes up a conversation with the couple next to us, and it turns out that they’re not only heading to Istanbul to go on a cruise too, they’re going on the same ship as we are. Later, we run into another couple going on the same cruise. The girls are captivated by a young Turkish woman who’s traveling back home with a handsome gray cat.
On the 10-hour flight, Bree and Liya manage to get a decent rest. Liya always has trouble falling asleep on overseas flights (and as a result feels terrible when we land), but this time Jan has her try out a soothing, narrated, almost hypnotic fall-asleep iPhone app — which miraculously seems to do the trick. She and Bree feel great when we land. The rest of us feel terrible.
Day 4, Istanbul. We’re met at Ataturk Airport by a driver from our hotel, the Millennium Suites hotel in Istanbul’s touristy Sultanahmet district. There we’re welcomed by Alper, the nice man who owns the hotel. He invites us to sit in the awning-covered seats outside and have a drink. Angela tries some Turkish coffee. Although it’s only 1:00 pm, our rooms are already ready, so after we’re done with our drinks, we all crash.
At dinnertime, Jan rouses everyone from their nap. We’re entranced by the sound outside of the muezzins calling people to prayer. There’s a cloudburst just as we’re getting ready to leave the hotel, so we take raincoats and hotel umbrellas on our way out. We walk to a restaurant near the Galata Bridge called Hamdi Kebap, which was recommended to us by a Turkish friend. As we’re getting close to the restaurant, we’re happily suprised to find our route takes us right through Istanbul’s Spice Bazaar. The Turkish restaurant offers a traditional array of grilled stuff on skewers, and it’s all really good. As her drink, Angela tries some apple tea (really, apple “tea”, since it doesn’t actually have any tea). After dinner, we feel energetic enough to make the walk back.
Day 5. We spend the morning touring the Hagia Sophia church/mosque. Even the girls are suitably impressed by the building’s enormous interior space, stained glass, and calligraphy. They especially enjoy the fact that the means by which we ascend from the ground floor to the upper gallery is not a flight of stairs, but a long spiraling stone ramp.
A happy visitor to Hagia Sofia.
We walk back to our hotel’s street, and stop for lunch at a restaurant that displays some delicious-looking poofy bread. The girls are charmed by the ubiquitous presence of stray cats. The girls begin counting how many cats they can see whenever we walk around the neighborhood.
After lunch and a bit of a nap, we tour the Yerebatan Sarayı, or Basilica Cistern. The dramatic lighting and background music make the centuries-old underground water reservoir seem somewhat otherworldly. Afterwards we have some ice cream made from goat’s milk. At the hotel, we have a cup of tea with Alper, the hotel’s owner. He shares a photo album with us of his family’s visits to Washington, D.C., and Walt Disney World.
Dinner’s at a restaurant two doors up from our hotel, where we’re joined by one of the neighborhoold’s numerous stray cats. One handsome cat hops up on Liya’s lap and happily purrs there until Liya shoos it away when our food arrives.
Liya on the street that runs by our hotel in Sultanhamet.
Day 6. This morning’s visit is to the Blue Mosque. Angela and the girls dutifully wear long dresses and shoulder and head coverings as we walk through the huge mosque. The tilework is amazing, although it’s high up and visitors can’t really get close to it.
Bree, standing inside the courtyard of the Blue Mosque, is carrying her trip journal. She’s been diligently writing in it every day.
In the afternoon, Anya stays in the hotel while the rest of us go for a walk in Gülhane Park. The park’s beautiful, and Bree has fun running around a set of bridges over a small stream.
In the evening, we visit the Ayasofya Hurrem Sultan Hamam to take a Turkish-style bath. The facility is 450 years old, and was restored a few years ago to its original function as a bathhouse. Now it’s an upscale place for tourists. Bree’s too young to get the full treatment, but the rest of us submit to a series of rinses and mounds of soap bubbles. It’s an interesting experience, if not exactly a relaxing one.
A small bazaar near our hotel in Sultanhamet.
After stopping for a drink at an outdoor cafe, Liya and Bree buy a tourist toy trinket that’s some sort of spinning Turkish top. Liya and Anya play with it endlessly until they can get it to spin fairly well. We have lunch at the Terrace Restaurant on top of the Armada Hotel, which has a great view of the Blue Mosque, the Hagia Sophia, and the water. (The picture was taken on the terrace. Liya’s holding her toy top.)
We walk back to the hotel, then take a cab to the cruise ship dock. Our ship is the Crystal Serenity. It’s part of the Crystal Cruises line, whose tagline is something like, “Nice ships on which children are allowed.”
We check in, and walk to our two connecting rooms. (We’d originally planned on going on this cruise last year, but really wanted to have the kids in an adjoining room, so decided to wait until this year.) Anya and Liya have a room to themselves, while Bree sleeps on a couch/bed in our room. We spend a while exploring the ship before dinner. We spend a while exploring the ship before dinner. Luis, one of the waiters for our table, calls each girl, “Princessa”.
In the evening, Angela and Anya go to see a performance of Turkish music. Jan follows, but when he enters the dark ship’s theater, he can’t find them, so just grabs a seat somewhere. The second he sits down, a belly dancer in harem garb steps off the stage and walks through the audience, ultimately deciding that Jan’s just the right person to drag on stage for some pair belly dancing. Jan plays gamely along, and does well enough to elicit the approval of the belly dancer. As luck would have it, Angela hadn’t anticipated any reason why she’d need to bring her camera to this after-dinner show, so we do not have photo (or, god forbid, video) documentation of this event.
The ship doesn’t actually leave port until tomorrow evening, so we have a nice nighttime view of the historic core of Istanbul from the ship.
Day 7. We pack up to leave our hotel in Sultanahmet, then do a morning tour of nearby Topkapı Palace. It’s huge enough that it doesn’t feel particularly cramped even with mobs of tourists. We visit the harem first, a large collection of rooms which are ornately decorated, but which our tour book points out essentially served as a “deluxe prison”.
We take a break halfway through the palace to eat lunch at Konyalı Lokantası, a restaurant whose terrace easily has the most amazing view of any museum restaurant anywhere. On one side, we’re looking at the walls of the sultan’s palace. On the other three sides, we have views up, across, and down the Bosphorus. After lunch, we walk through the palace treasury, then finish up at the gift shop, where Anya buys a sticker mosaic book. In the shop, Jan’s amused to watch a four year-old boy sequentially pester every one of the relatives he’s traveling with for a can of Pringles potato chips. The family seems to be speaking Arabic. Some parenting experiences are apparently universal.
Day 8, last day in Istanbul. Jan and Bree get up early and go to breakfast on their own. After Angela, Anya, and Liya have eaten and are ready to go, we take a shuttle bus to the last place in Istanbul that’s on our list: the Grand Bazaar. The bus can’t get close to the bazaar, so parks 10 minutes walk away. They give some instructions as we’re getting off, but we don’t catch them. Everyone else vanishes as soon as we get off, leaving us somewhat lost. We eventually get our bearings, but by that time we’re hungry, so we stop on a shady pedestrian boulevard for lunch. The boulevard has fenced-off plant areas along the middle, which turn out to be the homes for a number of stray cats, including a number of kittens. Anya’s not particularly happy with her lunch, so she and her sisters happily feed the lunch in small pieces to the cats.
We walk the rest of the way to the Grand Bazaar, which lives up to its name. The maze of colors and sounds is a bit overwhelming. There’s really nothing on offer that we’re dying to buy, but it’s still wonderful just to walk around and get a bit lost. Liya eventually purchases a small bag of Turkish apple tea: dried apples, cloves, and cinnamon.
Angela at the entrance to the Grand Bazaar.
Back on the ship, Liya and Bree do crafts at the kids program for a while, and we end the afternoon with a dip in the pool. The pool’s warm but saltwater, which Anya and Bree find hard to get used to.
Around 11:00 pm, the ship pulls away from the dock and heads south past the historic penninsula toward the Sea of Marmara.
Day 9, Quiet day at sea. The ship passes south through the Dardanelles. A ship’s announcement points out that the quiet green slopes to the northwest were the site of the incredibly bloody Gallipoli campaign 100 years ago. Jan’s looking out from the top deck when he sees a dolphin come up for air before sounding again. The girls spend most of the afternoon swimming. In the evening, we all get dressed up for the black tie dinner. Jan’s just happy that before we left home he was able to find all the pieces to his rarely-worn tuxedo.
Day 10, Kuşadası, Turkey. We take a tour bus to the ruins of the ancient city of Ephesus. The girls aren’t particularly impressed by the deep history of the place, and mostly unhappy about the heat. They’ve all managed to misplace their sunhats, so before the tour group enters the ruins, Anya and Liya buy hats from a vendor with our dwindling supply of Turkish lira. Bree’s upset she can’t find a hat her size before the tour group needs to leave, but the tour guide takes pity on her and runs into a shop, haggles quickly, and comes out with a pink hat for her.
It’s pretty amazing to be able walk down a marble-paved street where historical figures like Cleopatra or the apostle Paul once walked. Most of the city is still buried underground, but the excavated terrace houses have some beautiful frescoes and marble mosaic floor designs. Jan and Angela like the reconstructed facade of the Library of Celsus, but the only part of ancient Ephesus that really interests the girls is the huge amphitheater. The acoustics are still amazingly good, and the girls happily run up the theater steps so they can test whether they can hear someone speaking on the stage.
We have dinner at a restaurant with a nice courtyard. Liya and Bree are so tired they hardly eat, but Anya has enough energy to go to the kids’ program’s evening dance party. The girls have formed a little clique with several girls of roughly the same ages, including two girls named Anna and Madison.
Day 11, Beach day on Mykonos. We take a ship’s tender to shore, then a taxi to Ornos Beach. The beach is described as being good for families because it’s sheltered, and has a sandy, shallow bottom. We stake out a set of rental beach chaises under some umbrellas, then go for a dip. All three girls happily swim, but perhaps none more so than Bree. She spends the entire morning playing on either side of the water’s edge. The beach chaises belong to a beachside restaurant, so we get lunch from the restaurant and eat on the beach. By 2:30, Anya’s agitating for a return to the ship, so we take an island bus back. The bus drops us off at a different point than we’d left, so we have to meander for quite a while through some charming narrow streets before we finally make our way back to the boat dock. Even after spending hours at the beach, the girls still aren’t done swimming. They spend another hour or so at the pool.
After dinner, we go down to the ship’s theater for a dance performance by the group, “iLuminate”. We sit with Ken and Alma, the parents of the girls’ new friend, Madison. The dance troupe is known for their striking visual effects: the stage is completely dark, the dancers are clothed entirely in black, and their outfits contain electronic lights that can be turned on or off in a computer-controlled sequence. This lets them achieve various effects like zapping quickly from one side of the stage to another, or appearing to float, or flickering out of existence, or taking off their heads. One memorable effect has one dancer lying down while a second, identically costumed dancer (hidden behind the first) begins to rise up as their lights flicker on — it looks like a single person who’s leaving their own body.
Once we get to Oia, we have lunch at a rooftop terrace restaurant called Pelikan. The girls try to cool off by soaking paper napkins in water and sticking them on their foreheads. They perk up a bit after eating, then a bit more when they follow Angela into an air-conditioned shop. Angela buys some pretty embroidered shirts for Bree and Liya. Anya finds a small plush soccer ball just like the ones she has at home, only this one’s covered with pictures of Santorini donkeys. We walk back to the bus stop, but Anya realizes she left her book at the shop. She runs back with Angela to retrieve it, and get back to the bus stop just in the nick of time. Back in Fira, we find a place that serves great ice cream, then take the gondola back down.
Day 12, Santorini. The boat tender drops us off at the port below the cliffside town of Fira. There’s a very long cobblestone path with switchbacks going up to the cliff to the town. Anya and Liya are keen to climb the path, as is Angela. Bree’s put off by the pungent smell of donkey poop on the path, so she and Jan take a gondola to the top. The walk up is long, but so is the line for the cable car; we all arrive about the same time.
There’s a gorgeous view from the top, but it’s also really, really hot. We stop for a drink, then walk about a bit in search of the bus that can take us to the town of Oia.
Day 13, Monemvasia. We’re not really sure what to expect from this stop on the Peloponnese. The ship’s stopped here at this fairly small city because it has a small, medieval walled town set against a huge, Gibraltar-like lump of rock — but we haven’t heard much about the place, and from the little we find online, it doesn’t sound like there’s much here. Nevertheless, the walled town turns out to be charming, with a cobbled main street that runs up and down between close-set houses. The narrow streets also provide welcome shade from the hot sun.
Our walking tour takes us to the town’s centerpiece, an old Greek Orthodox church, then afterward our guide takes us to a coffeehouse. The girls are happy to take lots of pictures, mostly of sleepy cats. Here Anya snaps a picture of Jan and Angela.
While Anya’s happy to snap pictures on this trip, she’s only occasionally making herself available to appear in pictures. Here she consents to Jan taking a shot on Monemvasia’s main street. She’s holding the Kindle book reader she’s been taking everywhere.
Day 14, Our second “At sea” day, traveling between Greece and Malta. We spend a substantial chunk of the day by the pool. At one point, the boat picks up from a leisurely pace, and begins going full speed. The captain announces that one of the passengers has a medical problem, so the ship is making its best speed ahead to Malta. We weren’t scheduled to get there until tomorrow morning. We get close to Malta’s port of Valletta, a boat tender drops off the ill passenger, and then the ship heads back out to sea for the evening.
Day 15, Malta. Liya and Jan are eating breakfast on the back deck of the ship as it pulls into Malta’s beautiful old harbor. We meet our tour guide, Glorianne, just outside the quay.
The first stop we’ve asked to see is the Blue Grotto, one of a series of sea caves on the main island’s southern coast. The standard thing to do is to ride a small boat on a short, 25–30 minute tour into the various caves. When we walk down to the inlet with the boats, there are lots of boatmen sitting around chatting in Maltese, but only one boatman seems to be actually working. Several people, perhaps more boatmen, are cooling off by bobbing in the water. We wait for a while, and then finally the lone working boatman comes back. He takes us out, and we putter over to the first of the caves. They’re small, but the water is extremely clear, and white sandy patches under the water appear an intense turquoise color. The boatman knows nearly no English other than the names of the caves, which he states as we enter each cave in turn: “Cat Cave!”, “Window Cave!”, “Temple Cave!”, “Blue Grotto!”, and so on, until we get to “Last Cave!”
Back in the little van, we stop at a cliffside chapel for the view, then on to the medieval fortified town of Mdina. It’s charming in its way, but where most old towns would have narrow, winding streets with small houses, Mdina has narrow, straight streets that pass by huge houses with ornate facades. We stop for a snack at a restaurant that specializes in cakes. Anya tries a “banoffee” flavor: bananas and toffee, which seems to be a popular combination on Malta.
Glorianne drops us off in the main town of Valletta, where we walk into the oldest part of town. We make our way to St. John’s Co-Cathedral, a building looks plain from the outside, but turns out to be unbelievably ornate inside. Literally every surface is encrusted with Baroque decorations. We hadn’t really known what to expect, and so we’re all somewhat in awe as we look around. One detail the girls notice is that some of the painted figures on the ceiling have shadows which extend onto the surrounding marble, creating a very convincing three-dimensional effect. Before leaving the church, we stop in a room that contains two paintings by Caravaggio, including the enormous “The Beheading of St. John the Baptist”.
After that, Anya and Liya are done, so Angela takes them back to the ship. Bree’s still willing to walk around, so Jan strolls with her for a bit. They make an obligatory gelato stop before heading back.