From Venice Nancie, Mrs Holt and the girls took a slow train which stopped at Trieste, Zagreb, Belgrade, Sophia and finally reached Scutari, in Istanbul. They spent a week there in a hotel run by two very corpulent Turkish gentlemen who wore fezes. One evening they invited Nancie to go down to their private drawing room for coffee, on her own. They then asked her to dance with them. She wasn't very keen as they had rather large paunches. However she complied but as she told this story many times to us as children, she really felt that Mrs Holt should not have left her unchaperoned in such circumstances. Luckily for her, the two Turks were 'gentlemen' and she survived unscathed! Nancie had many dancing partners in later years and in many different parts of the world but this experience stayed with her all her life.
Nancie took the girls exploring and went to see the famous Sancta Sophia Mosque, which dominated the city then, as, no doubt, it does today. Built in 537 AD this amazing building was first a Greek Orthodox Church and later an imperial mosque, subsequently becoming a museum in 1935. The vast dome appears to hover above the nave and the mosaics are superb. However, in 1929 it was still a mosque so non-muslim visitors were probably not allowed access.
From Istanbul they carried on to Aleppo, by train. There they switched to a hire car with a Syrian driver. The drive down the coast was a complete nightmare, apparently, but at Aleppo they set off in another car with a different (and hopefully, better driver!). Nancie was interested to see Tyre and Sidon, names she recognised from the Bible. They enjoyed this last part of the journey to Haifa. Nancie points out that Haifa had no harbour in those days and they drove alongside a beautiful sandy seashore.
The party stayed in a hotel at first, right on the seashore and had a wonderful time swimming in the sea which had excellent surf. On one occasion Nancie got out of her depth and had to be rescued by some young men who were playing polo on the other side of the groin. Her adventures could well have ended at this point!
Later they moved to a German 'Hospice' run by 'The Sisters of Mercy' as Nancie put it in her memoirs.They were actually ' The Sisters of Charity of St Charles Borromeo'. ( This institution began in Nancy, in France, in the seventeenth century and today has seven autonomous branches worldwide, the main one being in Austria.)
The nuns at the hospice used to make some rather nice puff biscuits and one day when Nancie bit into one she found her mouth was full of ants - not a very pleasant sensation. ( No jokes about 'I'm a Celebrity', please) It clearly made a lasting impression on her as she reminisced, some forty years later.
On one occasion Nancie was not well and the German Doctor who examined her insisted that she must have bought some ice cream from a 'wayside vendor'. She vehemently denied this and was most indignant when he refused to believe her. She always claimed that this was her first experience of 'an unpleasant German'.
The hospice had a very large, walled garden, full of beautiful flowers, trees and plants, which swarmed with bees and the sisters made their own honey.
Nancie says that the sun never stopped shining for the whole month they were there. She thought May was probably the loveliest month of all in Palestine. It was hot but not unbearably so. They also bathed in the River Jordan and Nancie brought home a bottle of water which was later lost. It was intended for the baptism of her first baby!
They climbed up Mount Carmel to visit the Cave of Elijah which is halfway up the mountain and went to the ancient historical site of Petra, The Rose City. Nancie was still only sixteen.
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