Today was the best travel day ever in Turkey! We left on an Anamur Zafer Co bus at 10am in the front two seats. It was a super nice bus and only a 6 hour ride to Antalya. The buses in Turkey are usually amazing and have comfy seats and offer free çay, water, traditional turkish hand sanitizer and snacks. We made it to Antalya and a small Dolmuş was waiting to take people to Olympos. The dolmuş dropped us off in the Olympos Valley but not at our hostel. We waited at this Olimpos Restaurant for more than two hours and it was getting dark and we were getting a bit nervous b/c we did not have reservations. The dolmuş finally came and we arrived at 7pm just in time for dinner at Turkman's Treehouses. ... read more

We took the advice of Mr Kemal that traveling on small Dolmuş busses would be the cheaper and easiest way to get to Şanliurfa. Tages thought it would be smart to save money and head West to the Mediterranean where we could take it easy and relax for awhile since Turkey had been somewhat stressful for us, so far. However, I really wanted to travel to at least one more city in Eastern Turkey because I thought it was so beautiful and thought we could make it to Harran which is outside of Urfa and possibly stay in one of their famous bee hive hostels. So, we followed Mr Kemal's advice and headed toward the Dolmuş bus area. It was only supposed to take about 3-4 hours to get to Urfa from Malatya. However, Mr Kemal's ... read more

We stayed ın Göreme from September 28th thru October 2nd the average temperature durıng the day was around 27 °C or 80 °F. Durıng the nıght temperatures were around 10 °C or 50 °F. After leaving Istanbul we headed to this area of Turkey called Cappadocia. Formed from volcanoes approximately 9 to 3 million years ago (late Miocene to Pliocene epochs). The rocks of Cappadocia near Göreme eroded into hundreds of spectacular pillars and minaret-like forms. The volcanic deposits are soft rocks that the people of the villages at the heart of the Cappadocia Region carved out to form houses, churches, monasteries. Göreme became a monastic center between 300—1200 AD. Unfortunately, Emily caught a cold in our hostel room in Istanbul so our first few days in Goreme were non eventful as she was recovering. But ... read more

After a long bus ride from Prague to Vienna we were so excited to see friends. The main reason for making a stop in Vienna is not because it is the capital of Austria or the capital of Würstelstands but because of Simone and other old friends that I haven't seen since 2000. If you don't know, Simone was an exchange student at Lakeville High School ın 1996 and we have remained friends since. We have visited each other over the years and that is also how I know others in Vienna. And this time around we finally met Stella, Anna's sister who I have heard about for years but never met. We had a blast ın Vienna staying part time wıth Sımone and Jakob and part tıme wıth Stella and her roommates. Notable things we ... read more

Our time in Czech Republic was short. We only had two full days to see Prague and the long awaited Kutna Hora. Day one we started off with a breakfast at Bohemia Bagel. We read this place had an American breakfast and this is something we have been craving. It was indeed delicious with egg and cheese bagels and jalepeno omellets. They also had bottomless coffee, we stayed a long time! Afterwards we went on a letterbox hunt in Prague followed by a pub crawl in search of some infamous Czech beers. Day two was Kutna Hora- see next entry! We wish we had more time so we could have tried more delicious beers that Prague boasts. ... read more