9-9-2026 PM City Walk

 It was a quiet day.  We did go out in the evening with our cameras.

Heading towards the D building entrance.  Just look for the Gloria Jean Coffee shop and turn left.  Hopefully your fingerprint will let you in the building.

A sweet shop that sells only Baklava.

Our building is in the Yekta Mall complex.

Street scene

A catchy store name.  Turkey is proud of its tomatoes - not sure if that's where the name comes from.

Turkey has one of the largest natural breeding colonies of greater flamingos in the world.  This is in the Lake Tuz area - the lake is a salt lake which is what causes the pink color in the flamingos.

A very well preserved bug.

There is a mosque behind this small amusement park.

It reads "Ice Cream Shop".

A column central to a round about.

Strip mall.

Interesting shaped buildings.

9/8/206 PM Alanya Waterfront

 Today was a good day.  I got some good photos this morning.  Worked on stuff all day.  We planned to go out to the waterfront this evening about 6pm.  About that time I got a text from my niece saying this would be a good time to talk to my sister-in-law, my brother Gerry's wife.  We had a good chat.  She is doing fine and is surrounded by family and friends. She has so much help with catching up on the home repairs  and things that have to happen after someone dies.  I am happy for her.  As we discussed - grief is different for all of us.  I will send her dates to visit her in November or December when we return. I can move on as well.  

Michael cooked and we had our second meal of the day around 3:30pm.  So no need to spend time in a restaurant.  Off we go to the waterfront.  I took something like 95 photos and ended up with 21.   So good on me!!

We got out as the sun was setting.  It seems to happen so fast here.

We even venture onto the beach area - but not actually on the sand.  The area before the sand is dirt.  Who knows maybe we will actually walk on the sand!

9/8/2026 AM Apartment Views

 Since I got up a little earlier this morning I was able to get photos of the views from our apartment earlier in the morning.  We do not seem to be in a shipping lane - we have not seen any large cargo ships or even cruise ships passing by.  But today I noticed a speed boat pulling a parasail.  Most boating happens close to shore so we can't see it from the apartment.

Street views - no parasailors.

A glimpse of the mountains around us.

More street scenes - there are never many people walking in the streets below us.

There is a mosque near us - we can hear the call to prayer, but thankfully it is not that close that it is obnoxiously loud.

By the time I saw the parasail go by and managed to get out onto the deck with my camera it had almost passed the minarets.  

The next time I caught it a little earlier.

I spent the morning processing the photos from the last few days and getting them on the internet.  In the after noon I started working on a project I have thought about and done a tiny amount of work on.  I am hoping  - because of the extreme heat that we will work on individual projects during the day.  We will go out either in the early morning or late afternoon/evening to do photography.  

Michael has arranged for us to go out with a professional photographer on Friday.  That will be an intense day.  Before Covid we used to take these 1 day or 1/2 day photographer sessions on almost every trip.  But now - so many people want professional photographers to take photos of them in very scenic areas so they can go home with a professional photo album.  

The photographer Michael reached out to seems so excited to be able to teach us something about photography.  He took the time to look at both of our blogs and planned our session about what he thought he could help us with.  He even gave us homework!  I am so excited!