We spent out last day in Cappadocia on another tour. All the participants were people we had been with the day before: Charlene and Nancy, from San Diego, who began a three month trip watching the solar eclipse in Libya and, after moving across Turkey, were headed to Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Kazakhstan; and Yuko, a…
Yesterday was a full day. At 4:45 in the morning, Benden, the same man who let us in last night knocked on our door to tell us it was time to get up: we had a balloon to catch. By 5:15 we were in the minibus on the way to the office of Kappadokya Balloons;…
Yesterday was a travel day. We had to get from Selcuk to Avanos, in Cappadocia, which meant we had to drive an hour to the airport in Izmir, catch a plane to Istanbul (because all planes go to Istanbul before they go anywhere else), catch another plane to Kayseri, and then drive an hour to…
When Ginger wrote her grant application for her sabbatical, walking was the primary metaphor. She talked about how important walking had been in her life and how she wanted to walk in the steps of Paul through Greece and Turkey. She wrote as well as she walks and the Lilly Endowment let us take this…
In the middle of Selcuk are the remains of a Roman aqueduct. Storks come to nest on top of them every April and May. We could hear — and barely see — the new baby storks (storklets?) today. These pictures are for Amy, who likes pictures of birds from other places. Peace,Milton
Yesterday was a day of familiar and friendly faces, even in a foreign land. Cam, Rachel, Adam, and Joel were all on our bus today, as were Keith and Sandra, an Australian couple staying in our hotel. We all signed up for the tour to Pamukkale and Hieropolis, just as we had gone to Ephesus…
I never thought I would start a blog entry by quoting the Jackon Five, but “one bad apple don’t spoil the whole bunch, girl.” Aysha, our guide for our tour of the ruins at Ephesus, or Efes to the Turks, was wonderful. So was our tour group. This time the whole group was English speaking,…
We have had wonderful guides on this trip. Betty, who took us all over Greece, knew more about well, everything than most anyone I have encountered. She was a fount of knowledge. Alsi, who showed us around Istanbul our first day, made us glad we had come. Gulden showed us parts of the city we…
We knew we had a tour today, we just didn’t know where we were going. When I planned the trip with the help of Tovi from Kirkit Travel, he made some suggestions about tours and, after checking out the links he sent, I signed us up. That was several weeks ago. All I knew, looking…
Our first full day in Istanbul has come to a close. We arrived yesterday evening, landing on the eastern edge of Europe to be met by Onal, our host from Kirkit Travel, with whom we have only communicated by email to this point. It was nice to know that someone who knew our name really…