What can we say about Kathmandu? Crowded, chaotic, dirty, bad horrible roads (complete with wandering cows), brown water and lots of power outages. Thomas said “It is not a modern city.” It also had really nice people who live in this challenging environment every day and beautiful Buddhist and Hindu sites to visit, some complete with monkeys. Our hotel was near a lot of the madness but was a garden of calm. It was a palace for the king and queen for 70 years (until 1964), and was then transformed into a hotel when a new palace was built. It had a great pool to cool off in which was nice because it ended up being warmer than we were hoping. It rained every day (it is the rainy season there) but usually in the afternoon or evening.  We timed all our outings perfectly and never got drenched. Kathmandu ended up having our least favorite airport of all time. We’re in Bangkok, Thailand now and we’ll be heading to the beach (Phuket) in a few days for some relaxing time.

Dubai was awesome. Really modern city with construction everywhere. High temperature of the trip – 115 degrees the second day that we were there (easily beats out 106 in Morocco). The Persian Gulf wasn’t very refreshing at 93 degrees but the water was beautiful. The hotel pools were cooled and they felt really great. We stayed at two different hotels and luckily for the kids, both these places were right next to huge water parks and we spent every day at one of them. Denise and I are ready for a little break. Both hotels also had unbelievable breakfast brunches that we (over) indulged in. Thomas and I (Ed) went up the world’s tallest building, the Burj Khalifa. I thought the Eiffel tower was tall and this building is almost three times the height of the Eiffel Tower. Frances and I got to swim with (and ride on) a dolphin. I think the dolphin enjoyed Frances more than me. No video of that – not allowed. We just arrived in Kathmandu, Nepal and it looks like everything we were expecting. Our hotel is nice and it’s a lot cooler here (upper 70s). And raining.

Another great stop. Lots of rain, especially the first part of our stay. Interesting city on the Bosphorus strait that separates Europe from Asia. The first video starts with the view from the hotel rooftop, looking out on the Sea of Marmara, with the Bosphorus strait just to the left, leading to the Black Sea. Then the Ayasofya/Hagia Sophia which is a 1500 year old building that has been a Greek Orthodox church, a Catholic cathedral, a Mosque, and is now a museum. It’s very beautiful inside but you only get one shot because my battery ran out. The dark pictures are the Basilica Cistern, an underground water storage building built in the 6th century that is over 450 feet x 210 feet and can hold almost 3 million gallons of water. 336 marble columns hold up the roof. One of the neat things in there is a huge upside down stone medusa head that nobody knows the significance of. It was a really cool place to visit. Next are a few shots of the Grand Bazaar, one of the oldest and largest covered bazaars in the world with over 3000 shops on 60 streets. That works out to about 2000 jewelry shops, 500 T-shirt shops, 499 leather shops and one bathroom. It gets 250,000 to 400,000 visitors a day. We were lucky enough to find a jewelry shop and bought a Hello Kitty necklace. The best line we heard from one of the shopkeepers: “Would you like to buy something you don’t need?”. The video finishes up with the really great Sultan Ahmed mosque (also called the Blue Mosque). It was absolutely beautiful.

The second video is long and will be too boring for most. We have heard the ezan (or adhan or azan) (call to prayer) from the mosques in a few places now. First in Morocco (it woke us up every morning in Essaouira), and most impressively in Istanbul. We went up to the roof most nights at sunset to listen and could hear the call simultaneously from about 6 different mosques in the area. The video is from the courtyard of the Sultan Ahmed mosque and is the Ikindi or Asr – the late afternoon call to prayer in it’s entirety.

We’ve been gone for exactly two months now, and I think our favorite overall city has been Dubrovnik, Croatia. It was really a great place to visit, although it could get a little crowded during the middle of the day. It was clean, beautiful and well preserved (or rebuilt). There was also some amazing scenery surrounding this city on the Adriatic Sea. We had a fair amount of rain in short bursts, but still managed to explore all we wanted. We spent the first four days at a hotel overlooking the Sea, then moved to an apartment inside the old city walls for a week. The walls were amazing and you can walk all the way around the city on them. Frances even said: “I could live here”. The only down side was their ice cream did not measure up to what we had in Italy, Greece and France. We just got to Istanbul tonight and are looking forward to exploring this city for the next week. Bye!

Venice was beautiful and looked just as we pictured, except for maybe more shops than we expected. Definitely not “quaint”. They even had a Disney store. Lots of people. I don’t know if I agree that it is the most beautiful city in the world, but it’s certainly the most unique. We stayed in a perfect location and walked everywhere, except for one fun boat ride along the Grand Canal. Hot, like everywhere else, but not too bad. We even found a playground for the kids to play on. Of course there was ice cream and more pizza too. We are in Dubrovnik (on the coast of Croatia) now and just had the first real rain of the whole trip this morning. We plan on doing a whole lot of nothing for the next few days. We miss everyone and hope you are doing well.