Duman Hotel Altinkum

I've always been proud of how infrequently I get sick and how resilient I am to food from other cultures. Traveled China and Ethiopia with little or no difficulty. But something is in my gut now and it's not happy! Moving hurts, and anything that I attempt to put inside is rejected immediately!

For 3 days now we've been laid up in this lovely hotel, where we've been stuffed full of tea until it leaks out our ears, trying to recover. The first ...

Getting to be an expert at getting lost in different countries. Takes some practice, but I’m getting better and better as this trip continues. It wasn’t for want of trying though. I must have asked in almost every store in town yesterday for a map. The only ones I could find were full country maps with only the largest of roads shown. The one I finally settled on has a scale of 1:1 750 000 - we ...

... work and make useful tools?

Where do spice shops abound and everything is sold in bulk?

Where do you get friendly waves and honks while cycling?

Where can you go into a shop to buy something they don't stock ad the shop owner runs out to get it for you from another shop?

Where do old men eat more mandarins than they sell?

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TURKEY!!!!!

... my requested trip from turkish Cesme directly to italian Ancona (2,5 days) was suspended for unknown reason. So there was the other option to use a 3-stop-strategy to get to Italy.

First stop of my ferry journey was the little hop from turkish Cesme to Chios. And that means HELLO GREECE, HELLO EUROPE!!! Ok, it also means hello high prices...

... fresh fruit and veg which was all served at breakfast. The room was nice and bright with 3 single beds and an en-suite. The downside to the room was the lack of any sound proofing which meant that the group of people in the chill-out area could be heard into the early hours and the high winds, which Alacati is famous for, howling through the night.

In town, we found a ...

... 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 ...

Trying to get stuff from my Mac to an internet cafe PC! First try froze the sclerotic PC. Actually, I'll have to go back and convert the text to .pdf to transfer, I guess. Or, go on to a hotel or pension where my Mac does interface with the wireless modem, as in the present case it does not. Stay tuned.

... villages and crofts on Argyll where voracious landlords drove the Highlanders to the industrial cities, the New World or illness and starvation. One gets that same mournful feeling of the lost histories of these tragic wee piles of stone. Like the Scots, these Aegean islanders that survived the slaughter and enslavement moved to the new world and many prospered. In the case of the Khiots and Oinoussansan some went to sea to become sea captains and eventually, in many cases ...

... sem eg (Gunnar) fekk var ekki af verri endanum og thad ma segja ad lukkid a mer hafi farid ur illa klaeddum byflugnabonda og yfir i hamenntadan storborgara!.. :) Katrin fekk klippingu og hargreidslu og var eins og klippt ut ur tyskubladi eftir medferdina! (Myndir munu fylgja sidar!) Og fyrir herlegheitin borgudum vid einungis 45 lirur eda um 22,5 evrur eda um 2000 kall! (25 ytl fyrir Katrinu og 20 ytl fyrir mig!) Vid forum fint ut ad borda fyrsta kvoldid okkar i ...

... 3 hours which was enough time to have lunch and visit the beach which turned out to be a slab of concrete. Impression of Lesbos? None really. Lesvos from the boat That night there were 5 tour buses at the hotel so they organised dinner and dancing on a Gulet (traditional Turkish boat) for everyone. Wicked night - bad hangover.