After leaving Konya we went to the Ilhara Valley where we ate lunch on the creek. The restaurants have wooden floats out on the creek where you can eat at low tables surrounded by cushions – fabulous! The cat in the picture above certainly enjoyed the setting.
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We had a Turkish Bath this morning – wooowwww. First the sauna (I didn’t wear my glasses this time so they haven’t lost their paint like when I was in Jordan!) then scrubbed down with loofah type thing, then washed with a pillowcase filled with soap suds (very relaxing), then massage, then bowls of water thrown over me to rinse off. What an experience!
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We did sightseeing today – Aya Sofia and the Blue Mosque, the the Hippodrome. Gorgeous, but it was raining pretty hard at times and we all got saturated.
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What a busy day today! We started out by heading to Topkapi Palace first thing, missing a lot of the crowds. The palace is gorgeous – lots of fabulous mosaics and tiling, inlaid wood/mother of pearl panels and carved wood and marble. We visited the harem which was an eye opener – the Queen Mother had some great rooms, but everyone else was pretty much lumped in together. What a life! No privacy, locked in, the only recreation was gossip… painful!
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We’re in Istanbul! Even the name conjures up exotic images. It’s amazing. It was great to see the girls – there are 10 of us on Angie’s trip and we’re going to have a ball!
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Today was fantastic – we caught a train from Koln Station down to St Goar to catch a ferry down the Rhine to Koblenz. This is the “Romantic Rhine” bit where it’s all ruined castles and picturesque towns. Gorgeous! I ran my camera out of batteries getting pics of all of it.
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Today we checked out souvenirs and then caught the tour bus around the city. We saw some of the sights and bumped our way through the building site that is central Cologne for a whole until we came to the bank of the Rhine, where there’s a Chocolate Museum.
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Lina and I decided to stop in Germany for a few days before joining the rest of our gang in Turkey as we’d begged for a few extra days of leave. As it seemed as if it was going to be just me travelling solo for a while, I picked Germany since I know a bit of German, plus there are lots of plane connections between Germany and Turkey.
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The whirlwind tour continues, with a visit to Wellington, New Zealand’s sleepy capital city. I knew a couple of people who lived there, who I’d met on the Egypt trip earlier in the year, so it was lovely to catch up with them, and they showed us a couple of the sights of the city, like the Beehive… er… the Parliament Buildings. They also introduced us to the amazing Hell’s Pizza, which did gourmet (and gluten free!) pizzas.
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Our whirlwind trip of New Zealand in 10 days started in the South Island, in Christchurch.
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Two Weeks Away 
