Capadoccia

Full set of Cappadocia photos

Capadoccia’s ‘fairy chimneys’ do have a magical look to them, even drifting by them at night from the bus. You can see why people used to think that fairies lived in them. Now they mainly have tourists but the cute little windows fixed into these stone structures still make them […]

Sarah’s Birthday

Sarah’s birthday started at the end of tour around Capaddocia tour in the traditional tourist rip-off shop where she spotted a nice pair of silver earrings and gave me big puppy eyes. They suit her very nicely. We had dinner that night at one of the best restaurants in town which had a lovely […]

Antalya

Full set on Antalya photos

Our jaunt around the Mediterranean coast of Turkey continued in Antalya, a sprawling town with a lovely old quarter overlooking the sea. Coming into the town is not inspiring as you pass ugly modern apartment blocks and a busy commercial district, but then you pass into the old part […]

Fethiye and Butterfly Valley

Full set of Fethiye, Kayakoy, Lycian Way and Butterfly Valley photos

Fethiye (pronounced fet-ee-eh) came like a breath of fresh sea air. A pretty port town on Turkey’s Mediterranean coast surrounded by hills with multi-million dollar yachts bobbing in the harbour. It had the feel of Sydney’s Middle Harbour at the start of summer. The […]

Pamukkale

Full set of Pammukale photos are here

Pamukkale houses the incredible travertines, a cascading flow of mineral rich water which has created white stone pools filled with ice blue water that stretch for a couple of kilometres uphill. You must remove your shoes to walk on the travertines and there is a special shoe […]

Selcuk and Ephesus

Full set of Selcuk and Ephesus photos are here

We got to Selcuk (pronounced ‘sell-chook’) feeling a bit jet-lagged after staying up all night for the ANZAC Day dawn service in Gallipoli. Although we had a nap in the afternoon of Anzac Day and an extra night in Eceabat to recover (while the rest of […]

Gallipoli: The Dawn Service

Full set of Gallipoli photos are here

The dawn service at Gallipoli (known by the locals as Gelibolu) was never part of our plans. In all our meticulous research for major events happening in the countries we were visiting we totally forgot about the Australian hajj so it came as a surprise to figure out […]

Istanbul: The Return

If you missed them the first time around you can still look at the full set of nearly 400 Istanbul photos – all the dross has been removed.

Istanbul is the kind of city you could spend months exploring but we had to content ourselves with a little over a week in four separate visits. […]

Dogubeyazit

Full set of photos for Dogubeyazit, Diyabit and the trip back to Erzurum

By the time we got to Dogubeyazit (pronounced with a soft ‘g’) we changed our plans slightly and were now going to travel back to Erzurum with Nuri rather than spend extra time in Dogubeyazit. After five days on the road we […]

Kars and Ani

Full set of photos for Kars, Ani and Igdir

Kars, the biggest city we had been in since Erzurum, is the setting for Orhan Pamuk’s novel titled Snow. Kar means snow in Turkish, which might just be the author’s play on words. The Turks don’t seem to think of Kars as being called Snow City […]