Two Curious Souls

The word of the day is vulnerability. Due to airline changes, our flight was moved a day by the airline, we only had two nights to see Troy and Pergamon.  Thus we were vulnerable to the airlines changes. That meant a lot of driving if we wanted to visit these two rural ancient cities that were part of the center of the Hellenistic period and the Roman empire in Turkey.  So we flew from Antalya to Edremit and picked up a rental car.  Edremit is a town of about 100,000 located on the western coast of Turkey.   It is between Istanbul and Izmir.    Susanne was an English major in college and there was no way she was going to skip seeing Troy.  At one time, she was familiar with the writings of Homer.   But instead of calling on her memory from years ago, we got the Cliff Notes version of the Iliad for a refresher course.    We drove to Troy first, currently know as Truva, and caught the ruins of Troy prior to sunset. ...

We have met some very warm and kind people along the way.  They asked us about America.  Many had been to America and some have even lived there.  The guy that ran our breakfast stop in Istanbul lived in Grapevine for two years and spoke excellent English.  In fact, English is the "common denominator" language used here. Many tours are in English although many are in Turkish as well as in dialects of  Chinese or in Japanese.  Only once were we at a loss for communicating in a rural area but we were able to overcome it. Travel is fairly easy when you are fortunate enough to speak the common denominator. Only a few times did we resort to using Google Translate to help us communicate and that solved any other problems.  People here are well educated.  Most of the people we met talked about attending the universities or schools of higher education.  Many were trained in hospitality. People move from country to country here like we move from s...

Along the way,  Turkish Air was egging these two curious souls onward! These two ads showed up between Antalya and Istanbul. Don't stop wondering.  Keep your childlike curiosity. Never feel satisfied with the same old places and same old routines. Discover new colors of the earth. We were doing our part!

The words of the day are Plan B. As we left Cappadocia, we found out that air travel is so dependent upon technology.   This is a small airport in Kayesari.   Our flight on Pegasus to Antalya was scheduled to leave at 12:30 pm.   When we got there around 11:00 am, there were three lines backed up to the ticket counter.   They remained backed up for about two hours, well past the departure time.   It turns out that their computer was down and there was nothing they could do without it.   We finally got on board and and departed and did not need a plan B but we came to the conclusion that Pegasus had no Plan B. We made it to beautiful Antalya by the sea around 3 pm.   On the Aegean Sea, Antalya is a peaceful town of approximately 2 million people.   Slightly smaller than Denver, it is also spread out and abuts the mountains surrounding it.   Maybe this is what Denver looked like when the ancient inland sea was alive.   Antaly...

The composite word of the day is “other-worldly”.   We arrived in Cappadocia around 9:00 pm Monday the 7 th of October.    The land where caves have been turned into hotels and hot air balloons fill the skies! We flew Pegasus Airlines for this flight.  This is one of Turkey's low-cost carriers, but the service was great? We stayed in a place named the Stone Cave House Hotel. But with both of us being claustrophobic, we did not sleep in a cave room. Some things are not worth it. We were excited about our plans for the next morning and retired as early as we could. We had scheduled a balloon flight for Tuesday morning. Because it was dark, we had a very limited idea of our beautiful surroundings.  The idea was comprised of our exploration of the area via the internet.    We were picked up at 5:00 am and went to the balloon company’s offices where they served breakfast.   But after we had been there about an...