Kat and Ben

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 time in the middle of nowhere, crashing through fields and occasionally popping up in people's vege patches. We saw churches carved out of rock with vivid frescoes still in tact. We also visited a vast ... read more

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 was a really interesting mix of people heading up - backpackers like us, a monk in long flowing robes with jangling beads, romanian pilgrims playing gregorian chants on their cellphones and the ubiquitous camel touts ... read more

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 menu, the beer was straightforward. When it came to mains, we needed some assistance from the waitress. I happily tucked into what I thought was a delicious veal goulash. I was later informed that it ... read more

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 sure what they do with the rest of the chicken though. We've also been to our first ice hockey game. People laugh when I talk about going to an ice hockey game. Here it is ... read more

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. ... read more