Category Archives: Turkey

Day 439 In Beijing: BAKLAVA!!!

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I love this picture of a man and his art.

I love this picture of a man and his art.

We all know that the Mediterranean area is famous for Baklava.

Ask a Turk who makes the best and they’ll say, “Turkey!”

Ask a Greek who makes the best and they’ll say, “Greece!”

Ask an Egyptian who makes the best and they’ll say, “Egypt!”

Now, as an Armenian, I would say they have a point but they don’t.

Armenia makes the best Baklava.

However, I am a lover and not a fighter so I love baklava from everywhere and from anyone!

Baklava brings the world together and creates peace!

Jill and I were walking around Istanbul and just drooling with desire over the many different types of desserts and sweets in the windows.

There is, of course, lots of baklava, with different ingredients, but so much else to eat in both Turkey and Greece.

As you know, we are both vegetarians, and were sorely tempted to eat meat or fish, but stayed strong and kept our way.

As much as we would have enjoyed the momentary taste of it, we knew we’d feel guilty about killing something for our own pleasure so we supported each other and just ate more dessert.

We both think it was a fair trade off.

By the way, this may be a bit of a give away but I gained about 10 lbs on this trip.

Jill, somehow, didn’t gain an ounce.

I look like a Michelin man and she looks beautiful.

I’m a very lucky man.

 

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Day 438 In Beijing: The Diggy Diggy Duck, Y’all!

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Mr. Duck searching for just the right place to sit.

Mr. Duck searching for just the right place to sit.

Jill and I started cruising the streets of Istanbul.

We expected to see amazing mosques, beautifully dressed people, and lots of incredible desserts.

We were not disappointed.

You will see many pictures of those things in the next few weeks but I thought I’d start with something really out of the ordinary.

These two men were hanging out, relaxing in front of their store, and this little duck decided he’d join them.

They obviously know this duck, and probably own it, and didn’t seem at all surprised that it waddled up and sat in between them.

It was so cute, and so sure of where it should sit, that we couldn’t stop laughing.

The two men seemed to be enjoying our enjoyment and started laughing also.

It was a wonderful way to be welcomed to Istanbul and to our month long adventure!

 

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Day 437 In Beijing: Welcome To The Gun Show!

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Welcome to the gun store!

Welcome to the gun store!

Jill and I then traveled under a major intersection to get to the Galata Bridge so that we could start visiting the mosques and the main area of Istanbul.

There is a strange bunch of little shops under this massive intersection and I noticed something that really blew my mind.

There was a gun store here.

Now, in the USA, noticing gun stores isn’t something that unusual for me.

I see them, once in a while, and don’t really notice them that much.

But, in China, the only time I see guns is when the military is carrying them.

These could do some serious damage.

These could do some serious damage.

Sometimes the police but they seem pretty minimalist regarding showing them off.

It was right in your face here in Istanbul and just a bit of a shock.

I was guessing these are bb guns or fake but my friends, who know guns, thought they were real and there was someone who fired a few rounds and it definitely sounded like the real thing.

It was just another reminder that we were in a different country and we were about to find out so much more about the world.

And that is exactly why Jill and I love to travel.

One never knows what is around the next corner, or underneath the next major intersection, for that matter.

By the way, neither Jill nor I ever felt any danger or fear on our whole trip.  People were incredibly kind, generous and open with us.

In fact, after living in Beijing, things seemed slow, lazy and so uncrowded or busy, that we were able to relax a lot and noticed how anxious we had been in the last few months compared to how we like to be and want to live our lives.

It was a really good lesson to learn and something that we will remember about ourselves and how we choose to live our lives and make choices regarding our future.

Day 436 In Beijing: Galata Tower.

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The view from the Galata Tower.

The view from the Galata Tower.

Jill’s and my true vacation, and about 100 future blog posts, starts now.

We woke up, had a nice breakfast in the little cafe right around the corner from Andac’s apartment, and headed out to see the Galata Tower, or, Galata Kulesi if you want to see the Turkish name for it.  It used to be called Galatea, which is Gaelic, because the Welsh people originally settled there, built it, and named it.

Jill had been here before, since she’s now been to Turkey 4 different times to my 1, and she thought it would be a good starting point for our adventures.

We walked in and paid for our tickets.

I think it was about 9 USD or something like that.

It was worth 100x that for the view alone.

We went in the elevator and headed up.

The elevator was empty so we took a few pictures and I loved how the elevator buttons were set into a replica of the tower.

When we reached the top, we walked up a flight of stairs, and then out onto the tower ledge.

It was truly amazing.

There were only a few other people there so we had it almost to ourselves.

The Galata Tower was originally built in 1348 and is about 200 feet tall.  The walls are about 9 feet thick.  Just stop and think of that.  It is almost 700 years old.  But that is nothing compared to what we will see later on during our vacation.  It is truly mind blowing to think of the history and what has happened in this part of the world.

It was used to make sure the city wasn’t attacked and also for a few crazy inventors to jump off of with either a glider on their back or strapped to a rocket.  I imagine Wyl E. Coyote would have approved of this idea. Supposedly, both inventors survived and proved their products were reliable.  Have to be impressed with their salesmanship if not their sense of sanity.

It was a truly wonderful way to start the day and see so much of Istanbul in one simple tower.

We stayed up there for an hour or so and just breathed in the fresh air, watched the seagulls, and remembered what it felt like to be alive, free, and have the world at our feet.

After 7 months in China, we had forgotten a lot about ourselves.

We had become somewhat unhealthy, both physically and mentally, and both seemed to be coming alive again.

Just the feeling of the people, the culture, the architecture, the country, and the ease of everything was settling back in and it felt like we were home.

Jill had lived in Turkey for 3 months, at one time, and I’d visited for 3 weeks, and it seemed like everything was just right the second we arrived.

That feeling would continue for the next month and only become more evident and more true.

 

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Day 435 In Beijing: The Alpha And The Omega.

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The sun sets over Santorini. And over our life changing trip to Turkey and Greece.

 

I really don’t want to write this blog post.

It means that Jill and I have left Turkey and Greece and are headed back to Beijing.

In every way we feel as if we shouldn’t leave.

The friendliness of the people.

The amazing tasting, and healthy, food.

The cleanliness.

The lack of pollution and crushing crowds.

The ease of getting from one place to another.

The ability to quickly learn the basics of two different languages and connect with so many people.

The amount of different cultures intertwined and accepting of each other.

At some point, these countries will be our home.

We both feel like we have finally come home even though we were born in the USA.

I will be posting, over the next month or two, our full travelogue in Turkey and Greece.

There will be many pictures, many stories, and many wonderful experiences.

At this point, however, I am deeply saddened to be leaving and don’t want to even start blogging because it means that it has ended.

The closest I can remember to feeling this way was one time when I was returning from a trip to New York City after seeing my mom‘s art show at a gallery.

I was flying back to San Francisco in a plane loaded with passengers.

I can’t remember every feeling so alone.

I started to cry.

Not because I was sad but because of the amazing humanity, kindness and connection that I had felt on this trip.

It was just after 9/11 and people in New York were so kind and loving that it blew me away.

I wrote 5 pages of notes, on the flight, and still have them in my storage boxes back in the USA.

I’ll post them when I get a chance to find them on a visit home someday.

I know people think New Yorkers are rude, but they aren’t.

They just don’t suffer fools lightly.

If you are lost, and want help, they will be there in a second.  Just don’t stand in the middle of the sidewalk and block everyone else.

Honestly, I respect this and that they have places to be, lives to live, and things to do.

People in Turkey and Greece are the same way.

They help you whenever you need it and constantly amazed me at their laughter, happiness, and joy about life and living it.

This is what being in Turkey and Greece also brought out in Jill and me.

We remembered how to be happy, carefree, and safe.

Most of all, we felt like we fit in.

It was a wonderful feeling and I almost don’t want to see any of it end as we get ready to pack up our belongings and get on a plane flight back to Beijing.

By the time you read this blog post, we will have landed, and been in Beijing for a a few hours.

Give us a little time, and we’ll be fine, but right now, it is hard.

Day 434 In Beijing: Andac And His Ever Useful Combination Yoga And Camping Towels!

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Andac, Jill and me sharing a few beers at 2:30 AM after arriving at his apartment.

Andac, Jill and me sharing a few beers at 2:30 AM after arriving at his apartment.

Jill and I boarded our next flight and headed off.

Jill is incredibly lucky in that she can sleep through any flight, anywhere, at any time.

I, on the other hand, barely ever sleep on flights.

I have no fear of flying, in fact I love flying, but I just don’t find it easy to sleep in those seats with lots of people turning on and off lights all the time.

Jill used to work as an executive for major corporations so she trained herself to fall asleep the second her butt hits the seat.

Who knows, with all the traveling we plan in our future, I might be able to do the same.

Either way, the flight was uneventful, and we arrived a bit early in Istanbul.

We grabbed a cab and enjoyed the sites in the moonlight as our arrival was around 1:30 AM.

Jill has a lot of friends in Istanbul, and one of them, Andac (pronounced An-DACH as the Turkish language stresses the second syllable of each word) had told us we could stay at his place.

We told him we could grab a hotel, since we were arriving so late, but he would not have it.

This is actually not surprising from the Turks I’ve met and that Jill knows:  They are incredibly kind and giving people and love to have a good time.

Our cab driver did a great job and we arrived around 2:30 AM and rang the doorbell to Andac’s apartment.

He opened the gate and we climbed up the stairs to his place.

It was a great little 1 bedroom apartment and totally perfect for what we needed to do while we were staying in Istanbul.

Andac was everything Jill had said he would be: gracious, funny, smart, and very thoughtful and forward thinking.

He is actually running his own business selling these amazing Yoga mats/camping towels on Amazon and we used them for the whole time we were there and loved them.

You can also use them as clothes as you can see in the slide show.  Honestly, it is one amazing product and well worth buying.

I want to give a shout out to his business and encourage anyone that wants to support him, and buy a superior product, to click on this link to Nagnalife.com  and check them out.

 

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If you want to order one, just click these links:

Nanga Soleil with Travel Bag

Nagna Serengeti with Travel Bag

Jill and I each have one and love them beyond belief!  They are amazing comfortable, easy to pack, and are the fastest drying towels we’ve ever used.

We will be taking them on our trips with us everywhere we go.

After checking out the yoga mats/camping towels, we all talked for an hour or so and then Jill and I hit the sack ready to experience a full day of Istanbul tomorrow morning, bright and early!

Little did we know, the call to prayer would start at 3:30 AM that morning.  It was a wonderful way to be welcomed into Istanbul in so many ways!

 

Day 433 In Beijing: The Flight And Arrival In Xinjiang.

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I love the look of the woman beside us.

I love the look of the woman beside us.

Jill and I heard our flight called and headed out.

One of the interesting things about Beijing airport is that it handles 73,000,000 people a year.

That is utterly absurd and insane number.

I can’t even get my mind around it.

It is also one of the worst on time arrival and departure airports in the world.

This I can get my mind around after living in China.

However, we’ve been quite lucky since almost all our flights have been on time and quite enjoyable regardless of which airline we’ve used.

If you check out China Southern or China Eastern, they are ranked quite lowly overall.

However, I have to say we’ve had decent food, good service, and very comfortable seats every time we’ve used them and would definitely recommend them as they didn’t seem very different from United, Delta or any of the American airlines we’ve used previously.

Turkish Airlines, on the other hand, is amazing and we love flying them whenever possible.

But that is a blog for another day as we flew them numerous times inside Turkey and took lots of pictures.

We had a layover in Xinjiang, where our ex-roommate comes from, and it was beautiful.

It was also boiling outside.  It was somewhere around 113 degrees according to our pilot.

We hopped off the plane and after checking through customs, hung out in the waiting area for our next flight.

It was 6:30 pm.

An, interesting, and confusing part of China is that even though it is the size of the USA, it only has one time zone.

So, when it is 6:30 AM in Beijing, it is also 6:30 AM in Xinjiang.

Even though the suns rises and sets 3 hours earlier.  So, basically it is really 3:30 am in Beijing when it is 6:30 AM in Xinjiang.  It doesn’t make any logical sense.

It is silly rule that the government enforces for no particular reason that I want to attempt to explain on this blog but not while I’m living in China.

Either way, it was a beautiful sunset and a gorgeous landscape.

 

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Day 432 In Beijing: Getting Ready For Vacation!

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Getting ready to go on vacation to Turkey and Greece!

Getting ready to go on vacation to Turkey and Greece!

The day had finally arrived.

We were OUT OF HERE!

Trust me, we needed it.

I absolutely love my job and wanted to make sure I didn’t start suffering from burn out and Jill has her own website SF TOURISM TIPS and works incredibly hard on it.

As you may know, the internet in China leaves much to be desired.

It seems to come and go, depending on the whims of some unknown entity, and this makes it quite difficult to be able to keep working on a website that requires a lot of detail, information and access to the USA.

We are essentially blocked from using Google, Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube, unless we are on our Virtual Private Network (VPN) and the VPN is much slower than our usual internet feed here in China.

In other words, we needed a break and we needed it now.

We got it.

We got ready for our flight and already were feeling relaxed.

We said our final goodbye to our dear friend, Gulzar, and jumped on the bus.  We took it two stops and headed for the Airport Express Subway.

It is a fairly new subway line and only has 3 stops total.

It costs about 5 bucks each to go 45 minutes so it is a heck of a deal.

After we arrive at the airport, we hung out and just relaxed.

We spent a lot of time talking about Jill’s website, as that is going to be how we fund our world travels and live the life we want.

This is going to happen in a few years but we are very much into planning and making sure things work out, as much as possible, how we set them.

Jill has been working on her site for over 4 years and I’ve been editing and helping her with ideas since we met.

It is, to be honest, her baby and I’m just helping but it is becoming more and more of a team effort each day.

It may seem strange, since I have a blog that I update every day, but I don’t like writing factual stories based on research.  I enjoy writing fiction and making stories come alive (although, as far as I know, everything I’ve written on this blog is absolutely true).

So, Jill writes her website and I edit it and it seems we make a great team.

In so many ways since we also make a great team traveling, supporting each other emotionally and financially, and in pretty much every other way I can imagine a couple would want to support each other.

i’m not sure if you’ve traveled with your partner, but if you haven’t, you will learn much more about each other, in a week or two, than you will in years of living a stable life at home.

I think this is because each choice, moment and change happens so quickly, and so often, that you quickly learn how the other reacts, how they think, and what their strengths and weaknesses are without having to wait years for a stressful event.

Jill and I have been to Shanghai, Mongolia, Malaysia and Singapore twice and we met only 8 days before I left for China.  She arrived 1.5 months later without knowing anyone other than me here.  And she only truly knew me through emails, my blog, and Skype.

Talk about a leap of faith.

We both believe deeply in planning while also living in the present.

Day 431 in Beijing: Goodbye Drinks!

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Goodbye drinks at Schindlers!

Goodbye drinks at Schindlers!

As you , my faithful readers know, we have a ritual of good bye drinks when we go on a trip.

This actually started because our friend, Thorsten, from Schindler’s restaurant, suggested it.

If you haven’t read my earlier posts, Schindler’s is run by Mr. Schindler.

He has lived in Beijing for somewhere close to 30 years.

His life, like so many expats living in Beijing, is not what most restaurant owners lives usually seem.

He was actually the attaché for the East German Embassy during the Cold War.

He has run the restaurants for most of his time here but more importantly, he actually physically handed over the keys to the attaché for the combined German state when the wall fell and they became a single nation.

He is also a wonderfully jovial man and a heck of a person.  His wife made sure that Jill had a birthday cake for her 40th birthday party 5 days after Jill arrived and we celebrated her coming to Beijing.

Thorsten is the manager of Schindler’s and one of my first friends from my travels to Beijing.

Thorsten always makes sure that we come by and have our farewell drinks and we have a few pictures to commemorate the occasion.

It seems many people leave Beijing and it is a nice way to say goodbye and make sure to connect and show you care.

This was for our upcoming trip to Turkey and Greece and we were very excited and could not wait to get out of Beijing and to some place that had beautiful views and beaches, was less crowded and clean.

We’d had enough of pollution, masses of 25 million people, and cement and skyscrapers for as far as the eye could see.  It was definitely time for a change.

We’d been in Beijing for 7 months straight.

Every expatriate we know has said that they need to leave every 3 months or they start to get depressed, anxious and angry.

We had hit that point a few months ago but weren’t in the place to take off.

We won’t make that mistake again as it affected our emotional and physical health way too much and is advice that needs to be respected going forward.

It is the same thing I’d tell my clients so i might as well pay attention to my own prescription!

Day 424 in Beijing: Turkey and Greece.

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Jill and Gulzar underneath the Trojan Horse.

Jill and Gulzar underneath the Trojan Horse.

Jill and I thought this was a fitting part of our visit to World Park since we were heading off to Turkey and Greece in just a few days and were incredibly excited.

A little aside here, we are in Greece at this moment, since I write these posts about 1-2 weeks in advance.  I can’t tell you how Greece has been but Turkey was amazing beyond belief.

I plan to write the next 2 months of blog posts on our travel to Turkey and Greece once we return to Beijing since there is so much to see, do and write about in just two weeks of travel so far.

Trust me, if you ever get a chance to go to Turkey or Greece, do it.

In fact, do it now.

And that is coming from an Armenian.

Well, the Hagia Sofia in the World Park was a bit hilarious and a bit disappointing since Jill and I have both seen it in real life and it is utterly impressive and massively huge in all dimensions.

The good part of that is we were ready for the real thing and to be blown away, once again, by the awesomeness of the Hagia Sofia (by the way, we were blown away when we saw the real thing a few days later.  The Hagia Sofia is mindblowingly huge and inspiring).

We walked on and noticed the Trojan Horse.

I have to really question the ability to get a whole army into this little horse and kill enough soldiers to win a war but we are in the World Park so we just took some pictures and laughed about it.

Last, but not least, was the Acropolis and took some pictures of the Parthenon.

Again, by the time you read this post, we will have seen it, in real life, and I’ll be posting about it in the near future.

Jill and I are very much looking forward to seeing the Acropolis and being able to take some pictures of it and see the history that is truly alive in this part of the world.

FYI, I write down what I’m going to write blogs on and, just from the first 2 weeks of this trip, I have over 50 different posts that will have to be done.

Therefore, I’m expecting to have over 100 blog posts when we are done with our whole month long trip to Turkey and Greece.

Trust me, it will be an amazing read and I welcome you to join us on our real journey!

ps. I want to give a shout out to my cousin, Alexis Averbuck, who is the writer for the Lonely Planet: Greece edition.  She gave us a lot of great information and advice on what to do and where to go.  Thanks cuz!

 

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