That's St. George Lycabettus, by the way, in Athens. By all reports a very nice hotel.

Well, I was in Istanbul when these latest bombings occurred. We flew back Sunday morning, just before Bush arrived for the NATO Summit.

Istanbul was nailed down pretty tight, roads closed, the Bosporus almost closed. We were out sightseeing when the first bomb hit, killing 4 people. Security was very high already, but got worse. We wondered why traffic was at a stand-still and there were police everywhere.

But the incident was very isolated, nothing for tourists to really worry about (any more than IRA bombings in London were in the 70s and 80s).

And, I promised all my new, wonderful, Turkish friends that I would say, "come to Instanbul, it's a great place". And it is. They are suffering over there--every time some (minor) incident like this happens, tourism drops, and they despair.

I have heard that tourism did not drop in Spain after the (major) incident there. I think it's because Turkey is further east, close to Iraq, and muslim, that the skittishness is much worse.