We spent another day touring around the Cappadocia region. There are five cities in the region and all have amazing formations, cave dwellings and underground cities. The area didn’t “get discovered” by the masses until the 1980’s. Tourism has grown exponentially! Owners of the dwellings have become rich by transforming them into hotels and restaurants.... Continue Reading →

Day 6 started with a full day of sights( and sounds: calls to prayer) in the beach city of Antalya. The climate is warm to hot and hotter about 9 months of the year. We never made it to the beach so a return is needed. We did get to explore the city and some... Continue Reading →

After a cruise on the Bosphorus Strait that runs right thru the middle of Istanbul we had a seafood lunch at a shoreline restaurant. It was then on to a spice market visit. We had a late flight to Kusadasi, a resort on the Aegean Sea. My room with a view of the local Castle.... Continue Reading →

I arrived at my hotel in Istanbul Old Town with plenty of time to treat myself to a Turkish bath experience. WOW, was I unprepared for the pain, torture and embarrassment to follow. I think I was in denial and forgot to mention it in my first post. The “treatment” started with my undressing and... Continue Reading →

I have spent some time in Eastern Europe but I have never visited the amazing country on the “edge”. While not the capital of Turkey (Ankara is the capital) Istanbul is its’ largest and most dazzling metropolis. Formerly know as Constantinople, 20 million people live in a city that straddles the Bosporus Strait with the... Continue Reading →

We flew to Tokyo and experienced the worst Immigration Control (ever). A lot of people are visiting from many different countries. Japan is about as big as California. The population is about 125 million. 30% of the citizens live in Tokyo. About 66% of the country is forest. Our first day we taxied to The... Continue Reading →

The DMZ Opened We had to travel only about 1 1/2 hours to get to the DMZ area. Once we arrived we needed to take a “government” bus to enter the Zone. We drove to the Observation Building (as a precaution we didn’t have access to the outside deck but could see a few miles... Continue Reading →

This city is pretty amazing. It is the largest city in Korea and it’s capital. A short history of Korea: over the centuries the country was invaded and occupied by many other civilizations (Mongolia, China and Japan, etc). The Japanese invaded in 1910 and held strict rule until their surrender of WW 2 in 1945.... Continue Reading →

After a first leg to Detroit, the 15 hour flight went pretty well. We flew a route over Alaska then south to Korea. The drive from the airport to my hotel took an hour and a half. Traffic was bad for most of the trip and I am grateful that I will never have to... Continue Reading →

The Serengeti is 12,000 square miles of “Amazingness”. There is no other way to describe it. It is comprised of a National Park and two Game Reserves. Hunting the wild life everywhere is illegal but I never understood any other differences. This area of Tanzania is “greener” than the places we have been to on... Continue Reading →