Blogs from Central Anatolia, Turkey, Middle East - page 3

We are all on a high from our hot air balloon ride and find it odd to be arriving back at our hotel at what would be our normal breakfast time. It feels like we've had half a day already. We're heading off on more activities later, but we have a bit of time relaxing at our cave hotel reading, going for short walks in our little valley and round the top of the cliff, watching a couple having wedding photos with our hotel as a backdrop and generally soaking up this unique location before we go. In the afternoon our bus driver picks us up and takes us to the start of a walk through the alien landscape of Cappadocia in one of the valleys near Goreme. We stop at a particular rockface where Burak ... read more

This trip was a bit of a surprise to us. Our plans for Easter were to fly to Bangkok and then try to organise a trip to Myanmar, but for some reason the price of the flights to Bangkok never seemed to drop. I think we may have been spoiled by the £360 bargain we bagged last year with Oman Air, it’s set a precedent I’m not sure we’ll ever be able to match. This meant I was scouring the flight search engines for flights to ‘somewhere new’ which was the only guidance I’d been given by Faye. Jordan has always been somewhere we’ve wanted to visit but flights weren’t far off what we’ve paid to visit South East Asia, the cheapest being with Turkish Airlines, via Istanbul. The flights for the London-Turkey segment were ... read more

This is not the best year for Turkey. Just few weeks before getting into the country, there is a solid failed attempt military coup. Bombs have also blown in few places all over the country, including in Istanbul over the last few months....and the airport of Istanbul has just suffered from a major massive blow, just weeks before we arrived in Istanbul. So people will tell me, why go now? Simple answer....less tourists, nicer welcome....better experience! Ok, I like to play it fun...visited Angkor a week after a coup in 1997...had Angkor to myself at 3pm....was in Cairo 5 days after Mubarak went down, and did Syria...3 months before the mess started...so let's say...I love uncrowded and slightly unstable places...after all, I was in Kinshasa during the recent troubles in September. The point is always the ... read more

Why travel to Turkey in these unsettling times you might ask. To answer, lets back up a bit to 2013 when our youngest, Jessica, feels the pull to add Turkish to her list of language proficiencies. In short, she studies 2 years and receives a Fulbright scholarship to teach English in Turkey’s capitol city, Ankara. Being both a dedicated mom and a hopeless wanderer, this is just the reason I need to overcome any trepidation and dive in to explore this interesting and oh so important part of our world. Over the course of 2 visits, including stops in Istanbul, Ankara, and Cappadocia, I have seen the palace of sultans, breathtaking Islamic mosques and byzantine cathedrals, secret caves that housed and served as church for persecuted 6thcentury Christians, perfectly preserved cuniform writing carved over 3,000 years ... read more

Our flight from Şanlıurfa to Istanbul landed on time so given all our other flights haven’t started boarding until the scheduled departure time we figured we had time to grab some dinner before heading to our gate for our second flight to Kayseri in Cappadocia. After finishing our gourmet dinner of McDonalds, we checked the status of our flight which read “Final Call” hmm… About 5 seconds later over the PA system we heard our flight number and the words “final call” so proceeded to run through the airport to our gate (using elbows to clear a path through all the mindless wanderers). We made it to the gate in time, hopped on the bus and the stood there for about 5 minutes before it ferried us over to the plane. The flight to Kayseri was ... read more