Category: Turkey 2015
Turkish Feasts
August 3, 2015
The Turkish people are wonderful hosts who take pride in their food and produce. Any dinner with friends or for celebration seems to involve at least 10 dishes – 6 mezes, or starters, and about 4 mains. The mezes usually involve some kind of yogurt based dip, sometimes with eggplant, sometimes with dill, some kind…
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You Wanna Buy a Rug?
August 3, 2015
One of the great Robin Williams lines in Aladdin is delivered with a cigar and a shoulder nudge…and gave us lots of laughter as we travelled through Turkey and its many bazaars. In fact, before we left, Rebecca asked what I wanted to bring home, and I definitively DID want to buy a rug. We…
Tourists are so Funny!
July 29, 2015
There is this small village in Turkey called Olympus. Up the hill from the village of Olympus is a hill with burning rock – where methane slowly seeps out from underground and burns at the surface. The hill is called Caldiera. Naturally, in our open touristic state of mind – we put 1+1 together and…
The Call to Prayer
July 23, 2015
My father lived in Pakistan in the early 50’s and talked about people stopping in the street and praying when they heard the call to prayer. As we travelled through Turkey, the call to prayer punctuated the day – sometimes melodious, sometimes through loudspeakers that had seen better days, and once in the middle of…
Hiking in Turkey is All About the Rocks
July 19, 2015
On Tuesday night we hiked up an old road – built for trading olive oil by the Lycians and improved by the Romans. There are still olive trees on the hills. At the top of the road, we found a nomad’s tea shop, a Roman temple, city hall, and cistern. The temple was built with…
Life on the Seahorse – cruising and diving on the Aegean Sea
July 18, 2015
17 of us slept under the stars, woke at 7am for pilates and swim in the sea before 8am breakfast, or slept in (including the instructor). Then eat at 8am, move the boat, dive at 10, swim or snorkel after diving, rest in the shade, 12:30 lunch, nap or read or chat while the boat…
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“Old” Just Got 10 Times Older
July 9, 2015
In Alberta, old was a “turn of the century home” not so very long ago. In England, my idea of “old” multiplied to hundreds of years old. In Antalya, old is measured in centuries. I kind of knew this was coming, but it is a bit mind boggling. On Monday, Inci took us to explore…
Istanbul – a gentle chaos
July 4, 2015
St. Petersburg and Prague and many other European cities are the same way – mornings are quiet – but evenings are riotous and filled with people getting out and getting together – and blowing bubbles at midnight. I have had many colleagues arrive in Canada over the years from this part of the world, and…