2025 - Fall in Europe

It sure says something - and nothing good - when it's taken me over two weeks since I got home for me to finally get around to writing my last blog.  To back up, I spent two nights in Izmir as Atahan's guest before heading to Istanbul to overnight near the airport before I flew home on November 8th.  It worked out well as I had been fighting a dry cough and fatigue so just relaxing in his flat while he ran some errands was perfect.  It was becoming clear to me that perhaps an 18-day road trip covering over 4000 km had been a bit too ambitious.  In fact, we cut the road trip short by 2 days which turned out to be a good thing.   One bonus I like when I'm travelling is to link up with local people as it is always interesting to see inside their homes and and get a sense of how they live.  Atahan's flat is where he grew up as it has been in his family for years.  Of course, he has renovated it and put his own "fingerprint", so to speak, on it.  ...

There is no question that this part of my vacation - the road trip through eastern and southern Turkey has opened my eyes to, not only what a vast country this is with huge wilderness area, but also to its many contrasts.  The eastern part is much more conservative with restaurants serving no alcohol and women dressing much more conservatively than in the west.  Also, we drove through so many villages that looked like little had changed in them for decades, even centuries (other than vehicles).  It was nothing unexpected to drive around a corner and nearly bump into a flock of sheep or herd of goats being urged along by a man holding a staff or riding a donkey - and sometimes that was in the middle of a town.  Contrast that, with the very modern south coast resort cities and towns like Alanya, Antalya and Marmaris where foreign money has impacted the landscape and architecture.   Before I left home, I read some interesting facts about Turkey that I'd like t...

Over the past couple of weeks, several things happened that made us rethink our itinerary and make some changes to it.  First, Foca where we were going to spend the last couple of nights before I fly to Istanbul had some serious flash flooding and the town is still in "clean-up" mode.  So, that was removed from our stops.  Then, we realized how much driving this road trip has entailed - not that we didn't know it at the start - but it has been really tiring so Atahan wanted to change it up a bit.  Finally, he received some news that a friend of his was scheduled for surgery and he wanted to be closer to Izmir.  So, we added a two-day boat charter than would give me a different perspective by seeing the coast from the water and we replaced Foca with a couple days in Kusadasi (the main cruise port for visiting Ephesus) staying at a lovely hotel there.  So, with that, here is how the last few days have gone. We spend a night in Dalyan which was a favourite of ...