Budak Hotel Altinkum

... familiar to me, I find I need assistance more and am remarkably getting it!

So, for a little blip on the map overshadowed by the larger center Izmir, I think we did quite well for a few days. And for being sick, nothing beats warm blankets, hot shower and toilet nearby. Hopefully we'll be able to set out tomorrow, although it may be by bus. Nice weather on the days we're sick, and now it's raining when we feel better. Of course!

... the dog to bark enough to alert someone inside. Turns out there are no coastal roads and we’ll have to backtrack to Cesme and try to find an old road that shadows the bike-banning highway.

But that something that can be worried about tomorrow. Now we’re being led through a property to have tea while listening to booming Turkish music and watching the sun glint off the waves.

Where can you get to customs ad not have enough money to pay for a Visa ad they let you walk into town to go to the bank to get some?

Where do you see shop owners playing backgammon in front of their stores?

Where is tea brought to your tent in the morning on a silver platter?

Where do you hear deafening calls to prayer blasted from nearby minarets?

Where do full sheep carcases hang in ...

Destination 396

[Ferry]

According to the fact, that I already have travelled around Eastern Europe at the beginning of this worldtrip, there was little reason - or better said, little money left - to do it again. So it was planed to take one of those many ferrys connecting almost every corner of the european coast of the Mediterranean Sea.
Chios, Northeast Aegean Islands, Greece pajas

... to eat which served steak, and it was an expensive meal but one of the best steaks I've ever had. Chris said the same of hers. We had asked if they had any amaretto for Christine, but alas no. However, when we’d finished the meal the waiter brought out a couple of crème de menthe liquors on the house, so that just topped it off nicely.

http://www.umitevotel.co m

... family profession was only the Mastique farmers lives were spared...my mothers side (which is the Greek side by the way) had several trees and their lives were spared thus creating the opportunity for people to live and produce the resin. We drove through the island which measures aprox 30 miles long by about 15 miles wide. One of the stops was at the famous Neo Moni monastery which has been in existence since the Byzantine era. This lil church is jam ...

[Written from memory months later.]

I once again needed to exit Turkey for the sake of obtaining another 90-day tourist visa upon re-entering Turkey.

The first picture coincidentally taken upon departing the Turkish harbor at Cesme shows Bob, an American ex-pat who lives in Italy. A few minutes later we struck up a conversation on the ride across to the island. And ...

... thanked him for the money and said "if you want to stay tomorrow night please do so as our guest"! What an incredible place - a marina that charges very little and then gives you a free night and taxi drivers who refuse to take the full fare - Essex this ain´t. Tomorrow, our 36th wedding anniversary, we head for the port/resort of Cesme (pronounced Cheshmee), about 30 miles away, from where we hope to backpack up to Gallipoli to tour the 1st world war battlegrounds.

... crusaders, rogue pirates, Seljuk Turks, Cilician Armenians, Ottomans and the modern day Turkish peoples... Quite often it is hard to grasp the richness of the historical within Turkey... It might make it easier to simply state that we drove by or explored thousands of years of history within our nine day trip... starting with Catalhoyuk, the oldest human settlement ever found... dating from around ...

After a madhap circuitous commute, Julie and I made a mad dash into the airport in Istanbul and just barely made our flight to Ismir. Such stress, we vowed, would never be repeated less it mar our enjoyment/memory of this trip. Phew! Stayed only one night in the drab city of Ismir and took a 2 hr train ride to Selcuk where we settled in at the ...