Last days of the trip of a lifetime

Back in Kuşadası, we had seen a statue at the top of a hill (see middle picture below) that we wanted to walk to and have a good view of the city. We got a little lost getting up there and as we're standing there trying to figure out where to go next, Bren says, "there's someone watching us up in those trees." We waited awhile and finally a little boy poked his head out and we asked him how to get to the top of the hill. He didn't say much, just kind of gestured for us to follow him, so we did. He was about 10 years old (see bottom middle picture below) and these streets were VERY steep. We had to tell him to slow down a few times for these old ladies. hee hee We went through a residential area and all of a sudden he says, "My mama." "Oh, hello," we say to the lady and through her house we go and continue to climb. Finally we reach the top and give him a few Euros each (I think that's the currency in Turkey - I can't quite remember now). He left and we took in the view.

As we were taking our pictures, we looked down and there was our little tour guide bringing MORE people up the hill. We wondered if he stood in those trees where he found us and helped many lost tourists. If so, he could bring in a pretty good salary for a day. :) If you look at the picture below, you'll see him with his next group just in the bottom of the picture.

After our walk up the hill we continued to walk to the other side of town to see what all the fuss was about this Ladies Beach we'd heard so much about. When we saw it (bottom right picture below), we turned around and went back to our wonderful, quiet beach across from our hotel.

Our last meal in Turkey. :(

The next morning we had to take a ferry over to a small island in Greece and then catch our overnight ferry back to Athens. We went to the docks and turned the corner and saw this boat (first picture below) and thought, "Sweet! This will be a nice ride," then realized, oh, not THAT boat. Look in front of that boat (click the picture to enlarge it if you need to). Yeah, a tiny little boat for the next hour and a half. It was actually quite nice, though. Below is my Turkish tribute.

This boat dropped us off on the island of Samos. We landed at a different dock than we needed to catch our other ferry, so we hopped in a taxi. Our taxi driver asked us why we weren't staying longer and we said we didn't realize it would be so beautiful here. He asked us if he could show us a little village to see what we were missing out on. Yup. Missing out. I think we all put Samos on our list of places to come back to and spend more time.

Our last meal together in Greece. Sniff, sniff.

Here comes our ferry. All aboard!

We didn't book in enough advance time to book a cabin, so we had to sleep where everyone else hunkered down for the night. Thank goodness for an iPod to drown out background noise.

Last stop at the airport in Athens waiting for our flight back home (Karen catching a few winks below). Since Bren had met us later, she was flying with a different airline. Karen and I asked to go on an earlier flight to get into London earlier than we were supposed to so we could actually go grab a hotel and sleep there instead of sleeping at the airport and it worked. Have you ever been on call for a flight? It's very exciting. She told us at the last second that they could get us on the flight but it's about to take off. RUN!

We got on just in time and said goodbye to Greece in the air.

This really was an amazing trip and I'm SO glad I went. I would recommend it to anyone. The question I get now is, "Where are you going next?" My answer ... Hong Kong. My sister and her family just moved there this summer and I'm planning on spending next Christmas with them there. Yes, there might be little trips between now and then, but I need to give my bank account a bit of a rest for now.

Thanks for going on this journey with me. Sorry it took me so long to finish it. I will try to be better from now on out. 5 posts for me in 2 days is pretty good!

Ephesus

When people ask me to pick a highlight of our trip, it's hard to do, but Ephesus usually is the first thing to pop into my mind. Although Jerusalem and Bethlehem were cool because I've read so much about them in the Bible, Ephesus was more intact as it had been back in the day, so you didn't have to use your imagination as much to try to figure out what it might have looked like. Our guide told us that the town is only 20% uncovered, which is crazy to me because there's so much to see.

Paul and the Apostle John spent much time in Ephesus (Acts 18:19–21, 1 Cor 16:8-9). It is thought that Paul wrote the book of Ephesians in the Bible to the people of Ephesus during his imprisonment in Rome.

Can't you just picture Paul walking down this road in his sandals and toga type garment?

It was so surreal to be here. I loved every minute of it, even though it was CRAZY hot that day. Whenever our guide stopped to tell us something, he tried to stop in the shade but it didn't always happen. I had a bottle of frozen water in one pocket of my shorts and was sparingly drinking from the other bottle.

When we came around the corner and saw the street in picture #2 below, I literally stood there and was like, "Wow. This is amazing." I don't know if you can click on it and make it bigger, but it really was quite impressive.

The carvings they did back then were beautiful.

Picture #2 below is a toilet. There was a whole row of these holes in this slab and apparently when an important person had to "go" they had one of their servants come and sit on the spot for awhile to warm it up. There were no partitions, so out the window with any privacy issues.

Picture #3 above is of the library. This was at the end of the street in the pictures above which is why that street really took my breath away. Picture #4 shows that we could take up a second career if we wanted to. All 3 of us were constantly asking or being asked by other people to take their picture. It's no fun if you only have pics of the other person you're travelling with and never any of you together, so we were happy to take them.

The library ...

After the library, you come around the corner to another amazing site. The Great Theatre seats approximately 44,000 people.

You can read about this theatre in Acts 19:29 during the riot in Ephesus. Picture #4 below is Harbour Road. Ephesus used to be a port town but now the ocean is 7 km away!

I just love this picture of Bren sitting alone in the theatre.

Our tour guide told us that U2 have performed here, but I'm not too sure about that. :)

After our tour of Ephesus, they took us up this hill where Mary supposedly spent her last days. There's a wishing wall there where you can write your wishes on a piece of paper and fold them up and stick them in the wall. Not sure how that's supposed to work ... didn't try it ... but there are also 3 wells there. 1 well for health, 1 well for wealth and 1 well for love. The waters in these wells are supposed to be miraculous if you drink them. We were a little leery of drinking the water so we splashed a little of the "love water" on our arms and hoped for the best. :)

After this we went to a little village called Sirince where they make wine and olive oil.

This was a very good day.

Kuşadası and Pamukkale

After a 13 hour overnight bus ride from hell, we landed in this beautiful paradise called Kuşadası . At first our bus driver took us to this hotel waaaaay up on the hill and we said, "No, no. We specifically asked for a beach side hotel." Eventually we got things sorted out and stayed at the Sozer Hotel (pic #1 below). We may be girls, but we're not going to let ourselves get walked all over. Our first night was spent watching the beautiful sunset.

Picture #1 above was taken while standing on the beach in the pictures below. It was so nice and close. The dude in the picture below ran the beach and rented our chairs and umbrellas to us every day. He was Turkish and was married to a very nice woman from Holland. Karen and I kind of thought he looked like George Clooney ... I said kind of ... with his glasses on. Not when he took them off. Bren didn't see it at all. The little dude in the picture below was his helper and would run across the street and get pretty much anything you wanted because you felt too lazy to get up yourself. We had a great, relaxing time on this beach. Thanks Tafik and your little buddy!

After a day of relaxing on the beach we were off site seeing again. We took a 3 hour bus ride inland to Pamukkale. It may look like a glacier of ice, but really it's limestone. It would take me too long to explain how this happened, but if you're interested click here to find out more.

It was quite pretty, but I'm not totally sure if it's worth the 3 hour bus ride. The pool in the middle of the picture below is supposed to have healing powers. One of our trio (who shall remain unnamed) was having a few stomach issues and did not feel any different after swimming in the healing pools. So much for that! :)

This will be a short entry because the next tourist attraction we went to deserves it's own entry. One of my favorite stops on the trip, coming up!

Istanbul

After our cruise we weren't sure if we'd travel through Turkey or Croatia. We'd heard wonderful things about both places, but you can't do everything, so we had to pick one. We decided on Turkey and then found out that the weekend we wanted to go was a Greek holiday and therefore, almost everything was booked up. We found plane tickets at the last minute and hopped on over to Istanbul.

Our first tour was Topkapi Palace. This is an old Sultan's palace. Looks a little like Cinderella's castle at Disneyland, no (see first picture below)?

One of the buildings on these grounds holds the Spoonmaker's Diamond which is an 86 carat pear shaped diamond. Unfortunately, they wouldn't let us take pictures of it, but it was HUGE!

This is a picture from Topkapi Palace looking down on the fortress wall and Bosporus or the Istanbul Strait. Did you know that part of Istanbul is in Europe and part of it is in Asia? Weird, hey? One city sits in two continents and is separated by this Strait.

I had to take a pic of the hydrangeas because they are one of my favorite flowers.

The Blue Mosque with it's 6 minarets. I just realized you can only see 4 of them in these pictures. I have one later on that shows all 6.

We took a bus to Taksim Square which reminded me a lot of Robson Street in Vancouver.

Instead of taking the bus back, we decided to walk the million miles back to the hotel. Just kidding, but we did walk for about 5 km before jumping on the tram back to our hotel. Why I'm not a size 2 after this trip, I don't know. Walking did allow us to take a lot of nice night shots, though.

The next day we headed to the Grand Bazaar (pictures 1 and 2 below). It was very cool and had some beautiful things for sale, however, after being in Thailand and Malaysia where you can get things for dirt cheap, I only ended up buying 2 rings as souvenirs.

Picture 3 above - out to eat

Picture 4 above - time for some apple tea (pretty much the same as our apple cider)

The next day we took a tour of Hagia Sophia which used to be a church, then a mosque and is now a museum. There are so many beautiful mosaics in this place that my neck was sore from looking up the whole time we were in there.

Unfortunately, from the last picture above you can see that there is a huge scaffolding in the center of it which stopped us from getting a picture to show you how large it is. Trust me, this place was huge and very beautiful. It's so hard to imagine them being to build something this big back in those days with the limitation of tools they had back then. Well done!

Another picture with the Blue Mosque in the background (still only showing 4 minarets).

Here you can see (picture 2 below) all 6 minarets from the roof of our hotel.

From Istanbul we wanted to go down the coast of Turkey. We went to a travel agent and they booked us on an overnight bus. Our travel agent, Fatih (pronounced Fat-TY) took us out for the evening and showed us what a Hookah (aka ShiSha or Water pipe) is.

I didn't know what the heck I was doing but it was fun to try and no, I didn't develop a nicotine addiction from it. :) Thanks, Fatih for a fun night out in Istanbul.

Happy New Year!!!

Wow. Another year gone and I'm still so very behind on my blog. I'm going to attempt to catch up somewhat today. It's January 1, 2009 and I'm snowed in. I should be out shovelling but I'd rather be inside where it's warm. At least my new little car is safely in the garage. Oops, I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's finish off the trip from this summer, shall we?

After Israel we made a stop in Cyprus. We did get off the ship and went to the beach that day, but none of us took any pictures. Weird. I guess we just needed a down day and lazed on the beach. I think it was about at this point (halfway through the cruise) that we realized our port hole opened. :) I think these pics below were taken while docked in Cyprus, so you could say we did take a few pics.

Oh, and we watched the tugboat take us out of port in Cyprus, so here's another pic. Lucky that line didn't snap, hey? I would've been sawed in two!

Here are a few pics of our friends we made on the ship. Mark & Hala had their anniversary on the ship. Brent & Mimi were wonderful people as well. All dressed up for formal night and then the last pic is us with our wonderful Trafalgar Tour guides, Jerome and Ryan.

Next stop, Antalya, Turkey! We were only here for a few hours and did some shopping and site seeing. Turkey was much more beautiful than I thought it would be.

Then our ship went to Santorini. Since we had already been there, all 3 of us stayed on the ship and enjoyed the empty deck. I had the start of a cold the night before so was glad this was the day to be sick. Slept it off in my room and on the deck.

I was lucky that my cold didn't come full on and I was ready that afternoon for our next stop ... Mykonos! It was SO incredibly windy that we almost didn't get to stop there. We bobbed around for about an hour waiting for them to decide if they should let us tender in. When they decided that yes, we could do it, they made an announcement that said, "Please be extremely, extremely careful getting onto the tender boats as it is dangerously windy." Thanks for the encouragement. Why are we allowed to go if it's that windy? Here were the tiny boats coming to take us to shore.

Don't they look like toy boats in a bathtub? Crazy! Well, we were extremely, extremely careful and we made it into Mykonos.

I'm so glad we went. It was very beautiful. I was a bit sad we only had a few hours here. Oh well, maybe one day I'll go back for a longer visit. :)

Here we are on our walking tour of the Island. Jerome would stop and tell us stories every now and then and after about an hour we were on our own to explore.

Jerome told us that the end of Bourne Identity was filmed at this spot below (when he finds her again and she's renting out scooters and he's in his yummy white linen shirt). He said that after the movie wrapped up filming, Zorba's hadn't been open since. I guess they made a fair bit of money and took off.

More great shots of Mykonos.

After Mykonos we headed back to Athens and our cruise was over. It was expensive and the ship was quite small, but I'm glad we did it. It had a great itinerary and we met some very nice people along the way.