The landscape in Cappadocia is out of this world. Today, the remains of 700 and some odd churches, 40 underground cities, and many more rock cut dwellings are scattered throughout Cappadocia. In the middle of all this is the town of Göreme, catering to tourists, where we spent the better part of a week. These rock dwellings, churches, underground cities, and monasteries remained in use right up until 1922 where &#91read more]

Cappadocia (pronounced Kapadokya) has long been on our bucket list.  A land of fairy chimneys, rock monasteries, and underground cities, it captured my interest and imagination the first time I saw pictures of it.  It is located in Central Anatolia in Turkey, and it was our next stop after Istanbul.  We steeled our nerves and caught our second European night bus for 60 Turkish lira per person (including a shuttle &#91read more]

Travelling around the world, we have definitely encountered our fair share of street animals.  All across Central America and in the villages of Bulgaria, we met hundreds (if not thousands) of dogs and cats that live on the street.  Most of them were skinny (often with ribs showing) but happy.  They found their meals in garbage cans, street gutters, market floors and from the odd caring person that would put &#91read more]

Mosques are everywhere in Turkey (at least the parts we visited). They are not all old either. We saw several still under construction which surprised me. Coming from the prairie lands of Canada, where religion is more or less fading out of the social fabric, I was quite shocked to see how important it still is to people here in Turkey. Mosques remind me a lot of the orthodox churches &#91read more]

On a day where we saw hundreds of tourists queued up to enter Hagia Sophia and Topkapi Palace, we nearly had Yedikule Fortress to ourselves.  The complex was original the ceremonious “Golden Gate” used especially for the triumphal entry of the emperor into the capital city. Later, during the Ottoman era, it was expanded and served as treasury, archive, and state prison. It’s easy enough to get to (if you &#91read more]

This is the closest we came to a Halloween atmosphere in Istanbul. It was October 31st, and we heard not screams of trick-or-treat. Candied apples, popcorn balls, and hay bales set ablaze were in absence too. No rotten eggs, tossed rolls of toilet paper, nor roving gangs of children. It’s not surprising really, as all of those traditional memories of my childhood Halloweens in Canada don’t really exist in this &#91read more]

We’re not always museum people.  We definitely don’t visit them in every city or even in every country, but we try to hit up the really unique or interesting ones.  In a city that just oozes history, we couldn’t miss the Istanbul Archaeological Museum (which is actually three museums in one – the Museum of the Ancient Orient, the Museum of Islamic Art in the Tiled Kiosk and the main &#91read more]