We spent more time in Turkey than expected, and with our flight back to London looming it was time to get a move on and see some of the Balkans. We had originally intended to take a ferry to Greece and then see some of Italy before the summer season began, however, with time running out, we decided to pay a fleeting visit to Bulgaria and Serbia. During the last 5 or so days in Turkey, we finally got around to seeing some of the places on the tourist trail - Selcuk and Istanbul. Selcuk, a Roman city, was interesting because [View Full Entry]

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Our travels in Turkey began in the central region known as Cappadocia. The landscape there is crazy mad - built on volcanic soil and eroding ınto pinnacles and fairy chimneys. Where nature left off, humans have taken over and carved the pinnacles into rock hotels, thousands of churches, and pigeon houses. We spent several days wandering around in the hills near Goreme. After some hefty bus rides from Syria, it was great to be free and on foot. We only had a simple hand drawn map which conveniently chose not to include every valley. Unsurprisingly, we spent a fair portion of [View Full Entry]

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Syria turned out to be one of the pleasant surprises of our trip so far. Back in London, we were looking at the maps trying to figure out how best to get between Jordan and Turkey. Syria was in the way. But after doing some more reading we talked ourselves ınto ıt. There were a few nervous moments as we waited for our stamps at the border. My passport is fairly well thumbed now, and the poor border guard had to read evey stamp to make sure we hadn't been to Israel (or 'Occupıed Palestıne' as it ıt ıs referred to [View Full Entry]

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In the last few weeks, we seem to have visited quite a few biblical sites. First on the list was Mount Sinai, in Egypt where Moses is said to have received the 10 commandments. We tried to get there for the sunrise which involved leaving Dahab at 11pm at night and starting walking about 3am. The path up the mountain was well trodden although we only managed to have about 3 torches amongst the group of about 15 people. There were quite a few "ooofs" as people walked into rocks and camels and generally tripped their way up the hill. There [View Full Entry]

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After 10 months living and working in London, we are now on the move again! I've been pretty slack on the blog front, but can assure you that we have managed to pack every spare weekend with trips away. With the Euro growing stronger, we tended to head to UK destinations, but have still managed to acquire a few new stamps in the passport. The camera is also loaded with thousands of photos, of which there are too many to post here. So I may as well start afresh - from Cairo The pyramids at Giza were one of Ben's "big [View Full Entry]

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After a month in London, with no jobs on the horizon, we took the opportunity for a quick jaunt to Austria to experience the Alps for the first time. Of course, when you are living off savings, corners tend to be cut and we found ourselves at the coach station, waiting for a bus to Stansted at an ungodly hour of a Saturday morning. Munich was scorching hot, despite it being early, so we found a packed beer garden and settled in to wait for the others to join us. I wished I had brought a dictionary though. Ordering off the [View Full Entry]

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This was a squeeze to see how much of the Western United States we could visit in two weeks. Ben thought we could make it all the way to Mexico, but the more realistic route took us down the Pacific Northwest Coast, and across as far as Las Vegas before heading back north via Death Valley. Working our way around the Olympic peninsula, we encountered our first cultural highlight of the trip. Wandering into a hardware store in deepest Washington, we stumbled across the gun aisle and were horrified to see rather large assault rifles lined up against the wall, with [View Full Entry]

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We've been a good 4 months or so in Canada now, so its probably time for more musings on life in Canada. One truly North American custom we've had the privilege to endure is "Wings". We were taken by friends to a local establishment specifically for this purpose. I've never eaten so much chicken in my life. The wings come cheap and by the plateful, covered in delicious seasonings. The only other accompaniment seemed to be beer and possibly meatballs. This is great for those on the Atkins diet, but it definitely has adverse effects on your digestive system. I'm not [View Full Entry]

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Some pics from November. [View Full Entry]

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Here are some more pics from around and about Victoria. Can't say we've actually been doing much. Ben has been studying, me working and in my spare time trying to deal with the kilograms of apples we picked from our neighbour's tree. [View Full Entry]

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