Archive for September, 2011

We had a pretty easy flight from Madrid and were SO, SO, SO excited to arrive safely in Africa.  We quickly met up with my mother, Maggie, who was joining us for our whirlwind, month-long, tour of southern Africa.  She had already been in Jo’burg for a week teaching quilting, so she arranged for us to have a bit of a tour of Pretoria (a city near Jo’burg) in between the flight in from Madrid and our next flight out to Cape Town.

We had about 5 hours so it was a pretty brief trip, but we got to see some sights and we had absolutely delicious savory pancakes at Harrie’s (Highly Recommended).  Here’s a few photos.  At this point I was feeling pretty jetlagged and to be honest wasn’t that impressed with Pretoria.  But it was nice to get out of the airport and it gave us our first taste of Africa and it was really wonderful to see my mom.

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The last time we were in Madrid we missed a few fun things to do, so this time we made sure to do them! The first is known as “Churros con Chocolate”, which as you can see is a delicious savory donut (which is not covered in sugar like in the US) and a pot of very thick hot chocolate, almost like a pudding. It is served for breakfast and is oh-so-delicious. (more…)

We had a very pretty flight from Istanbul to Barcelona, flying over Greece and Italy. The public transportation is really good in Barcelona, so we got the bus and then the metro to our hostel and pretty much crashed.

This was a good thing because I had to be up early the next morning for something I had been dreading…a trip to the dentist!  Before I left the US I had some trouble with a tooth.  There wasn’t time to get it taken care of and it only hurt very rarely, so I didn’t worry about it too much.  But as we traveled around Europe I was having pain pretty frequently.  I thought long and hard about where to go to the dentist and decided that Spain was the best choice – after all, I know some Spanish, the costs there are reasonable, and they even seem to have something of a medical tourism thing going on, which gave me confidence that they would do a good job.

It ended up being a pretty interesting experience.  The dental office I went to looked brand new and was lit a little like a nightclub.  At least, a nightclub with a bunch of dental stations.  The office staff spoke quite a lot of English and the dentist spoke a little.  They got right down to business and ended up giving me three fillings!  I was so happy to have this taken care of!

 

Another unusual thing about Istanbul is that it is actually on two continents! The Bosphorous River runs through the middle of the city and on one bank is Europe and on the other is Asia. We spent all of our touristy time on the European side since that is where most of the famous landmarks are, but when we went to the airport for our flight to Barcelona we crossed the Bosphorous and made it into Asia! It was really not that much different, and we weren’t there for long, but it brings our trip continent count up to 5!

In Istanbul, the remnants of the Ottoman Empire are everywhere. This is very readily apparent if you go to visit the Sultan’s Palace Museum in downtown Istanbul. There, they’ve opened most of the palace grounds and some of the interior buildings to give you a sense of what it was like to be king in Istanbul. There are also quite a few surprising relics stored inside.

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