Istanbul is definitely the gateway to the East: I found it much more Eastern than European. Into our week in the city, we packed visits to mosques, the whirling dervishes, Turkish restaurants, the covered Grand Bazaar, the Spice Market, luxurious palaces and a Turkish bath. The highlight for me was being in the Hagia Sophia and the Chora, buildings that are now museums but were once Christian churches back in the Byzantine Empire. To see the vestiges of Christianity - the mosaics, the fading wall paintings and the crosses carved into the stone - moved me as I felt a kinship with those men and women who had worshipped the same God as I do many centuries ago.
Autumn saw my little apartment full with visitors from home. After Kathy left, it was fun to welcome my dear friends Normand and Lucie Bédard from Trois-Rivières.
And then my dear son Caden and his partner Matt Seburn arrived for a visit and that was more fun!
And in November, my niece Rebekah Klinck came to spend three weeks with me. It was fun to have her here during Advent because she decorated a wee tree for me, made a holly wreath for my table and put holly branches in the basket on my front door. She got me into the Christmas spirit before she left :)
And then a lovely little surprise landed on my doorstep a few days before Christmas -
Marie-Christine Jutras, the young daughter of friends of mine. She is studying in Paris; her exams were over and she needed a break, a change and a familiar face. We had fun discovering Brussel's fascinating Christmas market together.
