All Blog Posts Tagged 'long-term' (23)

When Jace accidentally let it slip a week before we left that we were going to Jordan at Korban Bayram, I was thrilled. My money had been on Cyprus (the Turkish side, of course), so the fact that we were (a) getting out of Turkey and (b) going to one of my top must-see countries made me extremely happy.

In the week before we left, there was a lot of discussion with Jace's work colleagues who had also bought the flights+hotel special deal as to plans and tours. One guy,…

You may say that I'm a dreamer

But I'm not the only one

I hope someday you'll join us

And the world will live as one

John Lennon, Imagine



An experience I have had several times while living in Istanbul that I have never previously had is being asked what religion I belong to. Because I don't have a religion, I am then labelled a non-practising Christian. This is annoying. I am not a non-practising Christian.

The average Turkish person…

In Turkey there are 2 'Eid' or 'Bayram' religious holidays in the calendar. The first Bayram, sometimes known as the Festival of Sweets (because of the huge quantities of baklava being eaten...mmm...baklava...) marks the end of the fasting month of Ramadan, and the second Bayram is 70 days after Ramadan. This second holiday is called Kurban Bayram, 'Sacrifice Feast', and if you are really old-fashioned, it involves killing a goat and eating it with your homies.

It's been four months since Jace and I went to Gallipoli, which was the last time we were out of Istanbul (unless you count our day trip to Kilyos, which I don't). Naturally, when we knew that we would get a few days off work at the end of Ramazan, we jumped at the chance to plan a trip out of the city.



As fans of all things ancient, we decided to go to Ephesus - called Efes in Turkish - just near the present-day town of Selçuk in the Izmir province on the…

Located in the middle of the ritzy Sarıyer district of Istanbul, the medieval fortress Rumelihisarı is a quick visit from anywhere in Istanbul. For us, it was the perfect day out in the sunshine- a beautiful historic location right on the shore of the glittering Bosphorus, and only a couple of hours commitment to go see it.…

Jace and I have been thinking quite a lot over the last few months about what we'll do after we leave Istanbul in November and have come up with the plan below.



Those of you in Sydney will be happy to hear that we'll be home for Christmas this year, with the plan coming into effect at the end of January 2012.…

Ok, so this one is a bit of an "in joke" for us. The world is now interconnected in ways that defy the imagination, and pop music is no exception. For some reason when you are travelling you might assume that crossing a border from one country to another, especially if the language, race and religion of the people there change too, would have some serious effect on the music you overhear on the road.

Not always true! It doesn't matter whether you're in a nightclub in Lima, in the…

Apart from our unfortunate run-in at the youth hostel in Ljubljana, Slovenia turned out to be a very cool place.

Slovenes pride themselves on being right in the middle of Europe, part of the EU, very cosmopolitan, and multilingual - many speak Slovene, Italian, German and English as a minimum. They have a long history - early human settlement dates back over 250,000 years - although…

Walking down a random city street in Ljubljana I saw this impressive bit of graffiti and I wanted to photograph it, but I didn’t have my camera with me at the time. I determined to go back and photograph it the next day. The mural was on the wall of a building that was inside a brick courtyard, with one doorway open to the street outside.

It was one of those ambiguous spaces, with no clear indication of whether you were welcome to enter the courtyard or not. I walked through…

The Crazy Kingdom

"Travel is glamorous only in retrospect."

 Paul Theroux

In the cult movie Willow, little person Willow Ufgood is accompanied by a vagabond swordsman named Madmartigan and together they embark on a journey of high adventure through a mystical land, pursued all the while by the army of the evil Queen Bavmorda.