Justin and Hazel Around the World

I can’t believe I forgot to post this with all of the Turkey posts!  But better late than never, so here is the lowdown on Turkey’s contribution to our wedding quilt.  We knew that we wanted to look for fabric in Istanbul’s famous Grand Bazaar.  You can read about the rest of our shopping trip here.

Even though Istanbul is known to have amazing textiles we had an epic quest trying to search for something that would be appropriate for use in a quilt.  In general the fabric we would like to find would be made of cotton or something similar, be a strong, thin fabric that isn’t stretchy, see through, or too coarse.  In the USA you can buy fabric specifically designed for quilting, but this is not the case in most other countries.

The first thing we found that would maybe have worked was a table runner.  We would have needed to cut it up and only wanted a small bit of it.  It was expensive though and we ultimately decided that we could probably do better.  It wasn’t easy though and even our final choice will be quite a challenge for my mom to put it into the quilt with so many other different types of fabric.

And here is our choice!

It is a pashmina made of cashmere.  We loved the pattern and the colors and it is incredibly soft.  Perhaps it can even be used in one big piece on the back of the quilt or it will just mean that there are little soft patches on the front!

We had a great first night camping and slept really well in the nice, sandy campground.

We had to get up really early, but it meant that we got to see a beautiful sunrise before breakfast!

Right after breakfast we got going because we needed to finish driving through Botswana and get into Zambia this day.  The landscape wasn’t that interesting, but we did see a little wildlife before we made it to the Kazungula Ferry that crosses into Zambia.

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After our time in Hermanus, we had a day where we just did mostly nothing and got caught up with laundry and other things, because then we headed back to Joburg for our overland SAFARI into Botswana and Zambia!  We were super stoked, even though we had to fly to Johannesburg, stay one night, and immediately hop back into the car for a long drive.  But it was worth it!  Nobody ever said that it would be easy to be on safari.  We booked our night at the Backpackers Ritz, which seemed to be affiliated with our safari company, Acacia Africa.  We were happy with the hostel; they upgraded us from a 2-person room and a dorm bed to a room that could fit all of us and helped us to order food from Nando’s (my favorite South African chain restaurant).  We didn’t see too much of it because we left the next morning at 5am to embark on our safari! (more…)

The day after we visited the penguins I drove us down to Hermanus, a small town on the coast, where we spent the night and searched (mostly unsuccessfully) for the whales which are supposed to be plentiful there.

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We’ve done really well on penguins on this trip!  Yellow-eyed penguins here and here, and hundreds of Magellanic and Gentoo penguins here.  We hadn’t had enough though and continued our trip from Cape Town with a stop at Boulders to see a colony of African Penguins.  It was a good time of year to be there because the babies were not finished molting and still had big hunks of fuzz.  They were adorable.  We also loved seeing the penguins surf in on the waves and waddle up the beach.  This is a really good spot for viewing penguins because after you pay your entry fee you can walk along boardwalks that get you right up close to the penguins.  There are lots of great photo opportunities!

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The day after we went up table mountain, we had another beautifully clear one – perfect for exploring Cape Peninsula, the bit of land that juts out to the south of Cape Town into the Atlantic.  Many people think that this peninsula is the southernmost tip of South Africa, but it isn’t, so you aren’t able to touch the Indian Ocean from anywhere near Cape Town.  We rented a car (thanks for driving, Hazel!) and started off along the coast.

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We didn’t spend too long in Pretoria – in fact the same day we flew over to Cape Town. We were picked up by a local quilter – Maggie was going to teach there – and taken straight to our hostel. After a relatively quiet night, the next day was a beautiful one so we went straight up to Table Mountain. Since the weather is so fickle on top of the mountain – including the ubiquitous cloud the locals call the “tablecloth” – we knew that we’d have to book it if we wanted the best experience possible.

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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!