Greetings from Istanbul! It's a wonderful, if draining place; very easy to get around, though. But it's a horrible place to try and practice Turkish, as every time you try, you get a sympathetic chuckle followed by pretty fluent English. We're catching our flight to Erzurum today. Aya Sofya and all that sort of thing are wonderful, but we're already glad to be getting off the tourist track, hoping perhaps to interact with some Turks who aren't selling something.