All Ready for our First Major Overseas Trip!

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Note: I am recreating this travel blog in 2017, based on my trip journal and memories. I really enjoy re-reading my previous two travel blogs so I wanted to be able to do the same for this Turkey trip.



We are incredibly excited about our first major overseas trip! We leave tomorrow, flying from Vancouver to London, then on to Istanbul. Istanbul sounds so exotic, and we will be so thrilled to be there. We originally booked a trip to Egypt and Jordan, but the Arab Spring intervened, so we have decided to go to Turkey instead. My parents went to Turkey a number of years ago, and really enjoyed it. We are spending a few days in Istanbul, then joining Peregrine Adventures' "Treasures of Turkey" 15 day trip. This will be the first time we join a group tour, so we hope we like it! Group travel enables you to see much more in a short time than you could on your own, and you get the fun of travelling with other people. We would never want to join a large group tour that travels around on those big buses, but Peregrine has small groups (maximum of 16 on our trip) and is more "adventure" oriented, so we think it will be a good fit for us. It is an Australian company so we expect our fellow travellers to be mainly Aussies and New Zealanders.

I have booked several day trips for us in Istanbul, and done lots of research on the places we will be seeing in Turkey. We haven't booked day trips in London, as we will be visiting Susan's family and are not sure of our schedule. We've noted some potential day trips which we'll arrange when we're there. I've never been to London (Susan visited many years ago) so I am really excited about seeing London too. I can't wait to see the Rosetta Stone at the British Museum.

Our friend Michael is staying in our condo and taking care of our cats, Ella and Cleo, while we're away. We are so glad he is able to stay, and won't have to worry about the cats while we're gone. We will be away for 24 days, which is the longest either of us have ever travelled. This is a big year for us, we spent 2 weeks in Mexico in January-February, moved into our condo in February, and now we're off on our Turkey adventure!

The next entry will probably be from an airport (we have a long layover in London). We hope you enjoy travelling with us.

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Photos

Ella
We'll miss our kitties while we're away!

Comments

[RENanDREW]

Turkey
Similarly to you - we were hoping to go to Tunisia, but the Arab Spring happened in 2011, so Turkey it was! Looking forward reading your blogs on Istanbul :)