Sue and I had a busy week with work and all, so we decided to spend this weekend doing nothing. We woke up late, sat around drinking coffee and watched TV for three full days. Not. Friday our plan was to have street food for lunch, then head for the Dolmabahçe Palace, then walk over …
Grand shopping adventure
Have we got some advice for you! If you like us and your curiosity outstrips your taste for shopping in massive crowds, try heading to the Grand Bazaar on a Monday morning. That's what we did and it worked out great (although we didn't buy anything). Well, we did buy one thing, but it was …
A “working vacation”
I realized this week that we are acting as if we are on vacation, but we're also working full time. Well, mostly full time. What does that mean? We're tired! But we're not going to stop. If you remember, we were going to spend six weeks in Nice, but ended up coming to Istanbul for …
Settling into Istanbul
The days here are long as we tend to get up by 9, head out for some sightseeing until 1 or 2 p.m., then home to work until 8 p.m. and then have dinner. We are generally getting to sleep between 1 and 2 a.m. Long, but really fun days. One thing to note is …
We’re bullish on Istanbul
We've been in Istanbul about 29 hours now (but who's counting) and we already decided we love it! It's quite a change from quiet Clamecy. It's 22:30 here and the street is still hopping, on Sunday night. Not as much as Saturday night, but there are still people milling around and browsing in shops. We …
On the road again
Today, tomorrow and Saturday are all travel days. Today we drove from Clamecy to Valence and tomorrow we drive to Nice. Saturday we are off to Istanbul. We have spent the month driving our trusty ride, a Dacia Sandero, all over France. For those of you who have never heard of Dacia, it is a …
Dijon and Strasbourg and home (oh my)
Steven has taken the past couple of Fridays off for travel. This week, we weren't leaving town until Saturday so we decided to take a day trip to Dijon, about 2 hours away. We didn't know anything about Dijon except that we could probably get mustard. It turns out that Dijon is a fairly big …
Belgium, part 2
Steven graciously ceded part of the weekend travel to me (because he was too tired to write about the whole thing — yes, I was too tired to write the rest, but I will certainly take the compliment), so I finally get to tell you about something more interesting than a trip to the grocery …
This is Saturday — it must be Belgium(*)
This weekend we went to Belgium. We left “early” Friday morning – about 9:30 – and headed to Brugge. It was about a five-and-a-half-hour drive. For those who do not know, Belgium has two parts (here is brief primer on the divide). The southern part of the country is occupied by the Walloons. They call …
Forgive the reflective digression
On this erev Yom Kippur (for those who do not know, it is the Jewish Day of Atonement), I want to take a moment out of reveling in our travels to remind myself how lucky I am. Has the road always been easy? Of course not. Am I all the things I imagined I’d become. …
