Dead? Dead! OMG, they are all dead! ☹ Emirgan Park is the largest park in Istanbul, and famed for the tulips that are planted each Spring, filling the park with color from early April until early May. As with much of the world, this year has been unusually hot, causing the tulips to bloom earlier […]
Turkey 10 – Pera Museum and Sunset
Today was another day of exploring the European side of Istanbul, and testing our new lenses. We planned to start off with a visit to the Pera Museum, which meant once again using the metro subway and ferry to get there. The subway comes every 5 minutes on Saturdays (“1 DK” and “6 DK” indicate […]
Turkey 09 – Camera Mania!
Today was an adventure in exploring transportation around Istanbul, shopping, dining, getting lost, and spending way too much money on stuff we can’t get in Ecuador. Let’s see how it unfolded… Evelyn decided she wanted a new camera bag. She is in love with luggage, and still searching for the ideal bag that will weigh […]
Turkey 08 – St. Nicholas and Kale
Unfortunately, the threat of terrorism did have an impact on our trip. Due to the threats of ISIS kidnappings, we diverted from our original plans of going to Adiyaman and Sanliurfa. Always ready to react to changing circumstances and opportunities, Mehmet took us to Demre and his favorite fishing village, Kale instead. This blog post […]
Turkey 07 – Cappadocia Enroute to Antalya
The chimney fairies were our last photo stop in Cappadocia. But first, a word from our sponsor… It seems that some people are a bit confused about this blog, and believe that Burt (aka “me”) is the source of all photographs and writing. Actually, at least 1/3 of all photographs shown were taken by Evelyn, […]
Turkey 06 – Cappadocia Balloons and Fairy Castles
We spent last night in an exotic “cave hotel,” where the rooms are carved out of the hillside, and lived much like the ancients did. Of course, those early inhabitants did not have lights, indoor plumbing nor internet, but we were only willing to go so far in “roughing it.” ☺ Yesterday, we pored over […]
Turkey 05 – Opium and Konya
Enroute to Cappadocia today, we saw some women working in the fields. Mehmet signaled the driver to pull over, and after a minute of discussion with the workers, Mehmet signaled for us to join him. He had gotten permission for us to take their photographs. They were hand weeding what appeared to be barren soil, […]
Turkey 04 – Karacasu and Pamukkale
This morning we got up early for a long bus ride to our next hotel. On the road, Mehmet suddenly told the bus driver to stop, then back up a couple hundred yards. He had spotted a woman herding goats on the side of the road. In what became a common occurrence, he approached the […]
Turkey 03 – Ephesus
We next drove to Kusadasi for our next night’s hotel. We stayed at the Hotel Marina Suites, which had a luxurious spa that none of us in our photo tour used. We had noticed that German was a common language on many signs in the ruins, and we had often been spoken to first in […]
Turkey 02 – Where Babies Come From
If you are following this blog in real time, you know that I am cheating with the publish dates. We started a photo tour of Turkey in Istanbul on April 1, which ended for us on April 11, when the group returned to Istanbul. During that time, we were kept going from before dawn most […]