Who says every post has to be a long-winded rant? Here’s a few pictures I took on top of a mountain when we were in Turkey!
We had one of our best single days in Diyarbakır, thanks to the generosity and eagerness of one man to share his city and culture with two total strangers. We met Muzaffer while walking down the street, in what seemed at first like just another friendly “where are you from?” It’s a common enough thing for strangers to stop us on the street and ask. It’s also a part of most of our commercial transactions, as normal as making change or leaving a Lira or two as a tip. “Where are you from?” “Canada,” we’ll say, and usually it ends there. Sometimes someone might go out on a limb, testing their knowledge of geography. “Toronto?” they might ask, hesitantly. “Vancouver?” Almost no one has ever heard of Calgary. So when Muzaffer stopped us, we assumed the exchange would be along those lines. Instead we found ourselves deep in conversation, talking religion,…Continue Reading
For the first time in my life I have had people ask me where I’m from and when I say Canada they shrug their shoulders and say, “Where’s that?â€Â After 5.5 months I am officially homesick. Although some of my homesickness might be brought on by the fact that my entire body is aching, my eyeballs hurt and my head is pounding. To say the least, I’m glad I brought Imodium. To make the situation even worse, Chris is also feeling like this.  I hope we get on our feet soon because we should jump on a bus and head into Iran. Right now we’re in a city called Van which is very close to the border. To get here we took a 7-hour bus ride from Diyarbakir where we spent two nights and had a wonderful adventure. We’ve had people ask us throughout our trip if we are homesick,…Continue Reading
Currently Chris and I are in a hotel room in Diyarbakir in eastern Turkey. I thought I could post a bunch of random photos for you guys to enjoy. They cover all sorts of different things and times during our trip, including our Sahara trek, Italy, Morocco and Turkey. We plan on heading into Iran in three days and apparently Internet is very hard to come by, so I’ll try to get a few posts ready to be published automatically throughout the next week. I promise we will try our best to let you know how it’s going and our where abouts in Iran. I know how nervous some of you are about us going there, and how jealous the rest of you are. Ha, ha. Anyways, for now, enjoy these photos. Ciao! -Laura-
Sorry for the lack of updates lately. We’ve been working our butts off on a video for the Second Home Hostel here in Istanbul. If the dang thing ever uploads properly, you’ll see it soon enough. In about three hours, we’ll be leaving on a 26-hour train to a city in Eastern Turkey called Malatya. From there we plan to visit a famous mountain called Nemrut Dagi (“Nem-rut Dog-kuh”) before crossing the border into Iran. It’s raining here in Istanbul (for the fourth day straight) so we’re excited to move on. The train ride should be great since we have our own sleeper cabin. So we’ll be kicking our feet up, taking in the scenery and maybe enjoying a bottle of wine. We have some catching up to do around the blog, so expect both Laura and I to upload some photo-roundups within the next few days, or as soon…Continue Reading