Sami Schilton at Disneyland Paris

This photo was taken at the Disneyland in Paris in 1997.  We had gone to Paris for the New Year.  We stayed at a hotel and had a great New Year’s Eve.  This was a tour organized by a professional tourism agency and my wife and I participated.  The group was fun and there were some very fashionable people among them.  The New Year’s Eve party was a lot of fun.  There was great music and singers.  However, the weather was very cold and we couldn’t do a lot of sightseeing.  We stayed in Paris for a week and went on to Rome.  We stayed in Rome for 2 days and went to Firenze and after that we returned home to Istanbul.  The whole trip was done by plane.

We did not go abroad on holidays with my family.  My wife and I went quite a few times but not with the children.  We used to go to the [Prince's] islands on a daily basis, not for the whole summer.  We went to Suadiye [a district in the Asian side of Istanbul which used to be a summer resort until the 1970s.] for the summer.  We have a house there and we have been going there for the summer for the last 40 years.

As for my wife and me, we sometimes go out with friends.  My wife goes to play cards with her friends once a week.  The men used to gather for poker once every two weeks but we don't any more, we do not enjoy it as much any more.  We go to the movies, the theatres and operas with friends quite frequently.  We also have a vacation at least once or twice a year inside Turkey or abroad.