From Bursa

Long day, but a good one. For some reason the hotel webmaster had blogspot blocked, but I finally managed to get in... it is, however, morning and I have to repack and going soon so this will be short.

Besides... more mosques! We saw older ones yesterday in Iznik (the former Nicaea) and in Bursa, where we spent the night.

To start we drove east from Istanbul almost to the far end of the Sea of Marmara. There we loaded the bus on the ferry for a 30 minute trip south to Yalova. Then we drove through miles of olive groves and small (really small) flower farms And villages and so on.. much more the rural Turkey of my memories with women working in the fields and men sitting in the cay (tea) houses.....

I rather liked the small scale of the mosques we saw today. They dated mostly to the 14th and 15th centuries, before the Golden Age. However the ornamentation was exquisite anyhow. We saw a splendid mausoleum for the earlier sultans... they were interred in these lovely round bupolas....it was interesting that they were always open to the rain coming in from above to bless their sleeping spaces..kind of neat in a way.

More tonight...... if teh internet gods are smiling. We'll be in Kutahya