World Trip Update #41 – Turkey

Sun, 10 Dec 2006

Hello from cold Turkey,

Not long since last update, however heading off to Syria tomorrow night and no idea about their internet options.

We have been having a great time with our tour mates in Turkey. Only small group of us but very fun group. Tonight we are heading to a Folklore night for dinner and all the alcohol you can drink, so may not be feeling the best for our 11 hours of driving tomorrow via Ankara back to Istanbul for our 11.30pm flight to Damascus.

Since our last email, we went to Ephesus. Amazing city of ancient ruins. They were so advanced with their baths and toilets, huge library and amazing acoustics theatre.

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World Trip Update #42 – Turkey / Syria / Jordan / Egypt

Wed, 20 Dec 2006

Merry Christmas to you all next week.

Been a while since last update, as it has been very difficult finding internet and time available to get on it, as we have been touring full on. Both are well and still loving our travels. Today is actually day 300 of our trip, so will be home in 66 days. If we have said how much we love places before, it just gets better and better. Loved Romania, then Greece, then Turkey, but now Syria, Jordan and mostly Egypt have just blown them all out of the water. If you travel anywhere, you really must come to this part of the world.

Since last email, we had a 12 hour journey from Cappadocia to Istanbul (with a short break in Ankara for lunch and a museum visit), just in time to get to the airport for our midnight flight to Damascus in Syria. Finally got to the hotel at 3am, and then had to get up early for our 1st full day of touring. We went through the desert areas which is most of Syria, to a little town called Maluula, which is a Christian town with a really old monastery up in the hills. We then went to Krak Des Chevaliers, which is one of the best preserved castles in the world. It is huge, built in the 12th century, right up on top of a mountain with amazing views, and in almost perfect condition.

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World Trip Update #40- Bulgaria & Turkey

Date: Wed, 6 Dec 2006

Hey there,

How are you all going? Firstly, please excuse me if there are a lack of spaces between words as the space bar on this computer rarely works unless you slam it, and also excuse if where the letter ‘I’ should be, there is some weird stuff, as in Turkey the keyboard looks the same for our normal letters, but then there are extras, and the ‘I’ we know isn’t in the same spot as the Turkish keyboard’s “I”. (editor’s note: these issues have been corrected)

Plovdiv was a really nice city – our hostel had amazing views as it was perched up high on a rock in the old town. The Old Town was really wonky cobbled streets, all lined with centuries old houses of unusual design where they start off smaller at the base and get larger on each level up. Very nicely painted too. There was also a large Roman theatre ruin and a few churches and mosques.

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