It's about 10:20 am here and I'm sitting here with a (nearly) full cup of coffee, ready to start updating about the last 2 months...

After showing Chris' parents around Istanbul, we joined up with our friend Jesse's family and friends to form a group of about 20 people and we went off to Cappadocia and then to the Mediterranean Coast for a Turkish Blue Cruise (note: the link isn't for the company we used, but I can't remember their name)

We left Istanbul and flew into Kayseri, which is known for their rug production, and drove straight through to Urgup, to our cave hotel in the heart of Cappadocia. We stayed at the Gamirasu Cave Hotel, which ended up being one of the best hotel experiences I have had. There is something about the hospitality of the Turks that is unrivaled in any country I have visited. Our group of 20 Americans arrived at the hotel at about midnight. We didn't plan enough in advance to have dinner before we arrived and were all starving once we set down our bags. We asked the manager, a really nice young woman who was about to start her first year teaching English in the area, where we could get a bite to eat. Being pretty much in the middle of nowhere, our only option was to walk to the small market into town and buy some bags of chips and sodas. As she thought about it some more she said, 'Well, I can ask the shopkeeper to bring a basket of some items here and you can just pay for what you'd like'. We thought that would be a great idea, but she decided it just wasn't good enough. "Actually," she said, "I won't be able to sleep knowing you're all here hungry." So, although she was just waiting for us to arrive, to head home for the evening, she opened up the darkened dining room, set 20 places and, though she wasn't a waitress or a chef, heated up some amazing soup from the kitchen and served us all soup and bread. And with a smile on her face the whole time. It was amazing! I don't have any gread pictures of the hotel interior, but the rooms are all dug into the rock, like the caves that litter the whole area of the country. The website pictures are better than anything I have.

Cappadocia is one of those places that you just have to see to believe, it literally looks like you're on another planet. Here is one of my favorite pictures:



















The rest of the pictures are here...

When we finished exploring caves in Cappadocia, we hopped on a minibus for a fabulous overnight drive to the coast to get onto our Blue Cruise. There were some issues with our boat being ready, but mid-afternoon the next day, we were aboard our boat filled with Turkish food, beer, wine and a crew to prepare it all for us! The next few days would be filled with lounging, eating drinking, reading, snorkeling and taking in the Mediterranean coastline.

I'm off to rifle through the packages that Chris just brought in from the school mailbox (Thank you mom and dad, Tanya and Tom and Rebecca!!) and will write more in a bit!

We're Baaaack...

After a long, and incredible but tiring summer, we've arrived home in Istanbul last night. I am going to work on putting up some pics etc of our trips before I start work. In 5 days. And on my birthday! :( But Chris and I have hit somewhere over 10 countries this summer, between the two of us, and there's a lot to write about so it may take a little while. In the meanwhile, check out our friend Scott's blog of his trip through Turkey with Chris, while I try to figure out how he did that map thing!

Buyukada

After we had a great few days exploring Istanbul with Chris' parents, we decided to go off the beaten path (sort of...) and hit one of the Princes' Islands. They are a group of islands right off of Istanbul and the city ferries make a few trips to the islands each day. Despite our reading the ferry schedule wrong and missing the first one we wanted (seemed to be a theme of the trip, unfortunately...More on that later) we ended up driving a ways to another Iskele (Turkish word for ferry launch) to get over to the largest island, Buyukada (Buyuk in Turkish is Big and Ada is Island)

The islands are unique in that no cars are allowed. Of course being that we're in Turkey, the land where rules don't apply, this meant "No cars are allowed. Except for some. Sometimes. So don't expect to not worry about getting run over." Regardless, it was gorgeous. Comparisons were made to Charlston and to Bermuda. Huge, old, waterview mansions with amazing, fragrant flowers were seen at every step of our walk. We decided, despite the close to triple digit temps, to walk to the Monastery of St. George, which was up a long and steep hill. Chris thought it was fun, but his parents and I were a little skeptical. Here are the Emerson's at about 1/2 way up...

At the top, we started talking to a group of kids who had also climbed the hill. It turned out that they (with the exception of a friend visiting from Columbia, i think) were all Turkish and were former students at Chris' school. They had all just graduated from college, most in the states and one in Ankara. It was really interesting to chat with them all. This is the whole group of us at the monastery.

After chatting for awhile, we realized we were going to miss our ferry off the island, so we took a horse and carriage ride back to the Iskele. Unfortunately Chris had an awful allergic reaction and was sneezing and tearing up the whole time! But we did make it back just in time for the ferry home...

Another stop on our sightseeing tour was the Dolmabahce Palace, which I found to be the least interesting of all of the different sights we hit. The funniest/worst part was that they made you wear these elf shoe shaped shower caps on your feet while walking through the house. They were hot and made your feet really sweat AND i'm pretty sure they were recycled :(

We did so much sightseeing that it's tough to remember everything we saw but this was definitely a highlight - we had snacks and drinks at the Ciragan Palace, which is this super fancy hotel (literally a can of Coke was around $10...) and it's here that we saw one of these "only in Turkey" moments - At the pool at the Ciragan, which is crawling with women in bikinis, we saw this poor woman, fully covered in all black (on an incredibly hot day, I have to mention!) running around after her children... 

Our first set of visitors were the Emersons. We started out in Istanbul with the full Istanbul tour with them and here's a picture at our Monday market... 

Wow, I have been so terrible at updating this! My (very good, i think...) excuse is that I've been away for the majority of the past month or so. I have been trying to think of the best way to update everything and I think I'll try to start from the beginning. Hopefully I won't leave too much out, but it's already starting to blend together. I just got back from Spain last night and today I kept saying things like "Gracias" and "Si" to the poor man who was trying to sell me hummus!