England

Just a quick note for flatland family. We spent a while in a small cabin near a town called Rouge, then 3 days in the beautiful medieval city of Tallinn. We flew to England on Ryan Air and have been here for 2 weeks hanging out with family. We spent 3 days camping in Wales with some family and spent most of the rest of the time at our grandparents place. Home soon!

The Baltics

It's been a while since I blogged but basically, since we left Warsaw we have been to Vilnius, Stalin World, Riga and here, Rouge. Vilnius was really nice. One highlight was going to check out the constitution of Uzupis, a slightly hippy-ish neighbourhood who have (jokingly) declared a breakaway state. Their constitution includes all sorts of important, and unimportant things such as...

10.Everyone has the right to love and take care of a cat.

23.Everyone has the right to understand.

24.Everyone has the right to understand nothing.

37.Everyone has the right to have no rights.

And those are only a few.

Stalin World was cool. The Soviet playground, while not up to Canadian safety standards was tons of fun. Dad wrote about it in detail so check his blog.

From Vilnius we took a 4 hour bus to Riga, it then took two hours in the rain to find our hostel. Riga was nice, but I preferred Vilnius. Riga was too big. There were plenty of old buildings, a few churches and unfortunately, no shortage of Amber shops and stalls. We actually spent two out of three days at Jurmala, the number one beach in the Baltics. The 32 km long, fine white sand beach was one of the number one holiday destinations in the USSR. It's vintage wooden cottages are owned by rich Russians who aren't quite rich enough for frequent flights to the Caribbean.

I must admit I'm not a beach person. If I have somewhere to settle down and clean off then I'm fine but day trips are not my thing. However it was three against one so I manned up and just tried to stay in the shade.

Because our hostel kitchen was so useless, we ended up eating a lot of cheap perogies and pancakes, not that that's a problem of course. We could each get a filling bowl of perogies for about 10 dollars total, and a pancake each for desert was 4 dollars total. On our way up into Estonia we had a 6 hour wait in Valga, a town cut in half by the Latvia-Estonia border. Because of the Schengen treaty the borders since Poland have been completely open. We went from Poland to Lithuania, to Latvia, to Estonia, to Latvia, to Estonia, to Latvia and then into Estonia. We had a bit of fun.

Her is a selection of photos from Poland and the Baltics

Birkenau barracks

The road that led to the gas chambers

"Work makes free"

Stolen spectacles 

Riga old town

I think they mean "sport zone"

Palace of Culture and Science

Warsaw old town

Warsaw new town (not quite as old as the old town)

Vilnius church

Uzupis Republic main square

Stalinworld

Warsaw

Warsaw

Day 1

Warsaw is a modern city with an incredibly sad tale. The city has been sacked, burnt, conquered and destroyed so many times it is incredible that it stands today. The most notable disaster was WWII. First of all, pretty much all of the city's Jews (one third of the population at the time) were killed in concentration camps, and secondly, the city had two uprisings; both of which were brutally crushed by the Nazis. The first was the Ghetto uprising, when the Jews living in the ghetto tried to break free from Nazi brutality in the ghetto. They were quickly brought down by the Nazis and immediately sent to the camps. The second was much bigger and deadlier. With German forces throughout Poland retreating in the face of the Red Army, the Polish resistance decided to make their move and liberate their city so as to establish Polish command before the Allies and Soviets came with backup. They managed to liberate huge parts of the city but unfortunately, the Allies were too busy in Normandy and the Soviets were simply camping on the other side of the river waiting for the Nazis to crush any Polish resistance before the came and took over the city. The Warsaw Rising lasted 63 days, and between 150,000 and 200,000 (yes, two hundred thousand) Poles were killed. When the Nazis regained control of the city, Hitler ordered the city to be razed to the ground and for every inhabitant to be killed. By the end of WWII about 800,000 Varsovians had died according to the Lonely Planet guide. (Compare that with U.S.A's total military casualties of about 400,000). In all of Poland over 6 million people, (about 20 percent of the population) was killed during WWII, again according to the LPG. We will go tomorrow to the Warsaw Rising Museum where we can learn more about it.

We started our day in Warsaw at the Tourist Information inside the Palace of Culture and Science, a massive, building given to the city as a gift from Stalin. The building is the tallest in Warsaw and manages to be tall, squat, ugly, beautiful, plain and detailed all at the same time. It's quite an incredible building. We took a tram to a museum, decided not to go in because it was too much money and looked boring anyways, and then had lunch at a milk bar. We walked down a nice street called Nowy Swiat to the Old Town. The Warsaw Old Town was almost completely destroyed during WWII and was painstakingly restored in the same old stlye in the 50's and 60's. It incredible to think that these building that look a centuries old are only a few decades old. We did a bit of grocery shopping before heading home on the metro.

Auschwitz

July 5 th 2011

Just a quick note...

We were woken up at 2 am last night by a young drunk American knocking on our door. We asked him what he wanted and he replied that he was wondering whether or not we wanted to come down with him to drink some vodka and have fun. My dad answered that in fact we were all sleeping at the moment to which he replied that we could wake up. Dad said we had children with us and he said: Okay, sorry and left. To quote my sister: My parents are no fun!

July 6^th 2011

Poland

Today was a miserable day cold, grey and raining. We had planned to spend the day in Krakow but decided it was more fitting to visit Oświęcim instead. You may not recognise this Polish name but it's German name, Auschwitz, may sound more familiar. The Auschwitz concentration camp was the Nazi's largest camp, 1.6 million people, 1.1 million of them jews, were killed here during the Holocaust. The camp was divided into three areas, Auschwitz, Birkenau and Monolitz. Auschwitz was the original camp, Birkenau was the largest and where the vast majority of the killings took place and Monolitz was a camp connected to a German metalworks factory which exploited the free slave labour. Monolitz can not be visited but the first two are open for visitors. We started the day off with a visit to Birkenau. Most of the camp was destroyed by the fleeing Nazis but you still get a feeling for it's imensity, with barbed wire and watch towers stretching as far as the eye can see. Jews would come into Birkenau on cattle trains by the thousands from ghettoes across Europe. When they arrived, they would be sorted into two groups, people deemed fit for work (usually about 25 percent) on the left, and people deemed unfit for work (usually about 75 percent) on the right. The 25 percent who were fit for work would then taken to start working while all the others would be marched to the far end of the camp for "de-lousing showers". They would be shown into underground rooms where they had to get naked, and then into the gas chamber, fitted with decoy shower heads. Once the Nazis had crammed as many people as they could into the room, they would lock the doors and start pouring in Zyclon B, a deadly gas. When the victims started chocking and realised it was not a shower they would fight and crawl on top of each other, despereatly trying to find air near the light holes on the roof. 15-20 minutes later, the doors would be opened, the bodies cleared out and a new batch of people sent in for their "showers" while the old corpses were cremated. We looked around in a few of the old barracks and then walked down the tracks to the crumbling concrete ruins of the gas chambers. There was a large memorial with plenty of flowers and rocks (Perhaps the rocks are a Jewish thing because we saw them at the Jewish cemetary in Krakow as well) Past it there was a second set of gas chambers. After seeing Birkenhau we took the shuttle bus back to Auschwitz for the afternoon. The camp at Auschwitz seemed to be more of a work camp than an extermination camp. I think people would generally be worked until they could work no more, unlike at Birkenau where it felt more like it was used for mass extermination as soon as you arrived. Most of the barracks had been filled with Museum exhibits, the most interesting was definetly the one where they displayed all the clothes, shoes, hair, brushes etc., that had been stolen from people entering the camp. Some of the more eerie collections were the 7 tonnes of hair from the dead bodies (used in the German textile industry), a huge room full of thousands of shoes and another huge room full of suitcases with names and dates and sometimes places of origin. The creepiest part of the camp was the still intact gas chamber, I'm not sure whether it was a replica, re-built from the rubble or or the original tester chamber, but it was incredibly creepy being inside. After our visit I was pretty exhausted. It was a lot to take in both physically and emotionally.  

Lviv

We have been in Lviv for 2 days now. It has been raining most of the time but the city is still beautiful, however in a more central European way. Odesa had architecture like that of St Petersburg whereas Lviv is more like Krakow or Prague. All the buildings are some shade of brown or beige and quite shabby looking, but in a good way.

July 4^th 2011

We started the day off well, with potato pancakes (called blyny, known as latkas in Winnipeg) and crepes stuffed with spiced apples. This filling breakfast cost me only 17 UAH (2 dollars), for all of us we spent 73 UAH (9 dollars). We have been eating most of our meals in Lviv at this particular cafeteria mostly because it's cheap but also because it's great food and has a nice atmosphere. For supper, we all filled our bellies with a few dishes each (including perogies) then got 1 piece of cake each for dessert as well, in total it cost 120 UAH (15 dollars). Back to the point, after our meal we walked over to the hub of town Ploshcha Rynok, to visit tourist info. The lady there was really helpful and was also interested about our boat trip from Batumi because she was wondering about taking it later that summer. She told us that the tram to the cemetary which I will mention later was currently not running and that we would have to walk. The walk was shorter that expected and surprisingly nice, 2 km down a street that was mostly gardens and attractive old hospital buildings, we assumed that the medical service was not great in Ukraine and that that explained the hospitals proximity to the cemetary. The cemetery we were going to has been compared to Pere Lachaise, the famous Parisian cemetery. It was in fact a lot like Pere Lachaise, it had all the same Gothic tombstones, overgrown graves and moss covered statues as you would find in Paris. We took a walk through the grounds, the only grave we recognized was that of Ivan Franko, a nationalistic Ukrainian poet, but it was a nice walk up through the trees and graves to the top of the hill. We had planned to get a bus back to the centre but it was only 2 km, so we walked. We walked through the centre to the other side of town, to the Lvivske brewery. After a bit of head-scratching we found the entrance to the brewery museum. We wandered through looking at the brewing exhibits and then waited while Dad did some taste testing. We could not visit the actual warehouse though, we think it was because no guides spoke English, it was all a bit disappointing to be frank.

Khotyn

Our day started off with a bit of shopping at the market. There was an entire section full of nothing but various types of baby animals, they had ducklings, chicks, kittens, puppies and bunnies. Did we ever have trouble getting Mhari out of there, actually, I think Dad liked it most; he kept cuddling with the ducklings. Other than that, the best part of the market was the fact that you could get 4-inch long sausages for the equivalent of 25 cents each, (3 bucks a kilo). We stumbled out of the market and into the bus station, where a guard showed us to our bus. We were all seated beside different people as the bus left and 30 minutes later we were shown off at our stop (my Dad is better at the transport blogs). We quickly found a taxi, gave him 15 UAH (2 bucks) and were taken to what was the reason for all these buses, taxis and sausages, Khotyn fortress (-dramatic music-). The fortress is situated on a grassy, riverside location and is popular with Eastern European filmmakers. The tickets were a bit more expensive than the last fort and Mom felt ripped off having to pay 50UAH combined (6 dollars). We added up the costs and for return transport with admission and taxis the excursion cost 145 UAH (about 18 dollars) much less than a day s excursion in Turkey. We wandered around the fortress but because of ongoing renovation we couldn't explore the palaces inside. We left the fort and walked down the river bank. It was an extremely idyllic setting and we hung around for about 2 hours, eating lunch, chewing on sunflower seeds and discussing our return home (less than a month 'till England!). On our walk back up to the parking I decided that this fort was definitely more stunning than the one at Kamyanets, yet not as fun to visit because you couldn't explore as much. We got a bit lost getting back to a bus stop. We found one but were unsure about it so we ended up taking a taxi to the main bus stop, only to discover later that the bus stop we were waiting at worked just as well as the main one. Right now we are in our hostel and I think my Dad is cooking up some pasta for supper.

Kyiv to KP

Kyiv day 3

Today, we spent most of our day visiting the Lavra, the Ukrainian Orthodox equivalent of the Vatican. We The Lavra is divided into two parts, upper and lower. The Upper Lavra is home to the more amazing architecture and is a state owned museum, whereas the lower Lavra is a church owned monastary, home to a series of tunnels containing mummified monks. The gold-domed churches and cathedrals of the upper Lavra are really nice and the mummified monks are, ummm, nice as well, I guess. This afternoon we visited the Chernobyl Museum. It was really sad and interesting; it didn't provide many facts about the Nuclear Disaster but was instead very impressionistic. For example in one room there were hundreds of photos of children who were evacuated.

Kyiv day 4

I need to rush through this blog so I can start writing about Kaymanets-Podilsky but this is a quick summary of what we did. We started the day by packing up all of our stuff, we then walked down a cute old street full of souvenir shops, ate lunch at a McDonalds rip off restaurant (Mc Foxy), saw a house with tons of statues (Chimera) on it and hung around in Independence Square.

Kamyanets-Podilsky day 1

We got off the night train from Kyiv at about 6 AM to be greeted by a man from the hostel we booked. He drove us about 2 km out of town to his hostel, which exceeded expectations. We ate breakfast and slept till 10 AM, then hopped on a minibus to the town centre. Kamyanets-Podilsky is home to an old town perched on a cliff in the bend of a river, as well as a rather large fortress, these are our reasons for visiting. We wandered over a bridge and into the old town. The old town was a nice place for a stroll but the best bit was a church adorned with statues of various saints who appeared to all be dancing, it was quite hilarious. We wandered across another bridge and came face to face with the fortress. We bought 4 tickets for 36 Hryvnias (3.60 euros) and went inside. The fortress was an interesting place; there were all sorts of corridors and towers you could climb around in and it was not very busy at all. We were mobbed by strange looking dogs while eating our lunch, they were a mix between Daschund and Labrodor, not particularly scary but not particularly cute either.

Dance, Dance,Dance

KP fort

a view

another view

Kyiv days 1 and 2

26^th of June

We got off our night train from Odessa at 8am in Kiev. Our hostels directions were fairly easy to follow and we were there in no time. We spent a few hours chatting with the owner while we waited out the rain but at 11am we gave up and donned our rain coats. It was a 5 minute walk to the hub of the city: Maydan Nezaleznhosti. There, we looked around in the underground mall for an English bookstore we had read about. The mall is a maze and after about 1 hour we decided the bookstore was non existent so we headed towards the Museum of the Great Patriotic War on the Metro. From the Metro station the museum was quite a long walk which was made longer by a man who would not let us through a fence due to some music festival. We did a bit of bush crashing up a steep forested hill and popped out in a large square in front of a giant (62M high) statue of a woman holding a sword and a shield with the hammer and sickle emblem. There was a tank, a large soviet realist style statue of soldiers advancing, and victory music playing in the background. We concluded that this must be the War Museum. We entered through a door in the grassy mound that serves as the base of Rodina Mat (the large statue), bought tickets and started to look around. The museum was all in Russian but you didn't need to read to understand the exhibits. In one room there was a very long table set with glasses, lining the table were telegrams sent to notify parents that their son had been killed. There were also things like a bicycle powered radio, lots of propaganda posters mostly of the “101 Ways To Kill A Nazi” variety and many Nazi and Soviet war medals. The museum was a really interesting look into how much the Ukrainian people suffered during WWII.

27^th of June

Well, unfortunately we woke up today to buckets and buckets of rain. We stayed in all morning getting things like schoolwork and laundry done before our hostel owner drove us to the supermarket to buy food for the next few days. After we had dropped off the groceries we walked to St Sophia's cathedral, only to find out it was closing early, in 15 minutes, because it was a holiday. It started to rain a little harder so we gave up and went home. We had stir fry for supper and are hoping to get something done tomorrow.

The hub of Kyiv

Rodina Mat

A prime example of Soviet realist design

A grey day in Kyiv

Odessa

Odessa

Read my Dad's blog for a detailed blog about the boat trip from Batumi to here, Odessa.

23^th of June 2011

We are staying in a weird hotel called Tokyo Star. There is 1 receptionist for 600 rooms, and the rooms are clean yet tiny. It's like those drawer hotels in Japan except a bit bigger. Odessa is gorgeous, it is like a warmer, miniature St Petersburg, with it's grid streets and Russian (pre-soviet) architecture. There are not many “must-sees” in Odessa, but wandering around the leafy streets is great none the less. On our first day here we were walking around the Opera house when my Mom spotted a ticket office. She found out that we could get tickets to “La Boheme” on the 23^rd, for 20 UAH (2.45 $) each and decided that we would all go even though our wardrobe is hardly formal. We ended up with 4 tickets for a slightly higher than expected price of 30 UAH (3.68 $). We spent the day before going the show wandering around town, booking train tickets and eating Borscht. At 6:40, we went inside to find our seats. We climbed up some stairs, up some more stairs and up one more flight of stairs before arriving at what we assumed must be our seats. A women showed us to seats 108, 110,112 and 114 and a few minutes later the lights went out and the curtain was raised. The show was, like most Operas, a fairly simple story of love and death, lots of fancy costumes and loud singing. The orchestra was, personally, the highlight, although the auditorium itself was quite incredible, with lots of gilding, paintings and statues.

We have been having a bit of trouble communicating in Odessa, it seems that English is even sparser than in Georgia, I can read the Cyrillic lettering and that is handy for street names and such but even though I can pronounce it does not mean I know what it means. We have learnt how to use bus number 148 from the train station to the centre and that is all we need really. Tomorrow we are planning to head over to Arcadia beach which is supposed to be tacky and busy, especially in summer.

24^th of June 2011

We got out of our closet fairly late this morning, had some sort of apple pastry from the nearby market for breakfast and went to catch a tram. We knew that Arcadia beach was the end of the line on tram number 5. When we saw a number 5 we hopped on, paid our fare and sat inside for about 15 minutes before the conductor motioned for everyone to get off. We had a quick look around and realized that we were not at the beach but in fact at the airport, oh well. We crossed the street and got back on the same tram which had just turned around. It took about 30 minutes to get to Arcadia, and those trams are not smooth, fast and quiet as they are in other European countries. The tram is most likely from Stalinist times and the rails from even before that, maybe I'm exaggerating but it sure looks that way. An interesting thing about the trams is that nearly all of the tram drivers and conductors are women; the bus drivers seem to be men. The tram emptied out on a wide pedestrian boulevard leading to the sea. The beach at Arcadia is quite interesting, it is mostly taken up by private clubs although there are a few cramped patches of public beach, the food and drink is fairly expensive, and there are plenty of kitschy souvenir stalls. It is a good place place for people watching but not great for swimming (the water is about as cold as Lake Superior). We sat on a shady bench near for about 30 minutes, eating raspberries and watching life go by. For lunch, I went to a doner kebab shop. A little later Mhari and Dad decided that they were hungry as well and they went to a small restaurant. Dad pointed at what he assumed meant doner kebab because there was a picture of one beside it. Mhari did the same except with a hamburger. A few minutes later a man brought them their meals; for Dad, a bread roll with chicken, carrots and mayo, and for Mhari, a large crepe with dill flavoured cheese inside. Not what they were expecting but they were hungry so they eat it anyways. We are back in our closet hotel now, soon we will go out for a walk and to buy some more train tickets and later try to Skype my uncle to sing Happy Birthday. Have a good one Matthew.

Onion Domes

Old Building

Tram

Opera house

Last days in Georgia

We took a Marshrutka from Borjomi to some other town, and from there to Batumi. The bus to Batumi was very squished seeing as most people were either coming home from shopping sprees in Tbilisi or going to Batumi for a vacation and bringing a different outfit for each day. The rest of the family had a great ride except I was stuck beside an extremely fat guy whose thigh is now imprinted into my leg. The ride only got worse when the driver started playing Justin Bieber tunes, boy was I glad to get off.

The area of Batumi that borders the coast is full of renovated old buildings, fountains and posh hotels whereas about 500 metres back crumbling old apartments and horribly potholed roads are the norm. There is a great park called “Batumis Bulvari” that runs along the beach. It has cafes, restaurants, dancing fountains and lots of sculptures. We found a great restaurant that serves these little Russian dumplings and a really good soup, we ate here quite a bit. The reason we came to Batumi was to catch a ship to Odessa, we are on this ship as I write but we are letting my Dad write that blog so you can check it out there.

Observations on Georgia

• Many grey Soviet apartment have been repainted in bright colours
• Cigarettes cost between 1 and 2 dollars a pack
• Vodka can be bought for as cheap as 3.50$ for 500 ml
• Kachipuri (cheese pies or pastries) are really good and cost about 1 dollar
• The bus stations are nearly as bad as the Indian ones
• People lose their temper a lot, a shock coming from the Middle East where it is unheard of to raise your voice
• Restaurants are much harder to come by here than they were in most other countries we visited, but they're worth the effort
• I smoke at least 2 packs a day just from second hand smoke
• Georgian men smoke at least two packs a day, and that's just the first hand stuff
• I wish we brought trekking equipment because the hiking opportunities are amazing
• There are Soviet era statues and monuments all over the place
• The roads are either unpaved, paved or used to be paved but now only half the paving remains
  
  
  By the way it was not my choice to have the bullets as flowers, I just don't know how to change it.

Georgia 2

Wow, we have spent a week exploring Georgia a bit more and all I can say is that the landscape is incredibly beautiful. We went from Tbilisi to Kazbegi and stayed in a great guesthouse (Emma's Guesthouse) for 4 nights. One day we walked up to a dramatically perched church on top of a hill overlooking the town. I was sick, with a cold and the runs so I went back with Mhari and my parents walked further uphill for another two hours or so. Our guesthouse served really good food and we went to a family dinner, my Dad wrote a good post about that one so just check his blog. We spent another day in a beat up Soviet Lada taxi driving to the Russian border and some waterfalls. At one point we were driving on a steep, rocky track and somehow that incredible car managed to make it up. We were unsure what to do on our last day in Kazbegi, but we found an English guy called John who wanted to share a taxi to go to Sno Valley for the day so we thought we would go along with him. We drove down a cliff-hugging road to the village of Juta, at the end of the valley. From Juta we walked all day up a nearby valley, to a glacier at the base of a large mountain. The walk was easy for the first half but once we crossed over the river it got very steep and we had to scramble over boulders. The views from the glacier were more than worth it though. We hung around a bit at the glacier, taking pictures and enjoying the snow until it started to rain. About halfway back to Juta, the rain stopped, so we decided to take a family photo. We had tried earlier with a plastic bag on the camera only to discover that this made our photos very blurry. We played around with the camera, taking photos of us jumping for a long time before we decided we couldn't waste any more time and went back to Juta.

We are now in Borjomi, a Soviet resort famed for it's salty, carbonated mineral water. We ate a large lunch/supper at a restaurant near the train station - good food, good prices. Today we went on a long hike through Borjomi National Park. We started by walking 1 km to the administration office to get a free permit to enter the park, then we took a taxi to the Ranger Station followed by a 2 km walk to the trail-head. The hike itself started with about 2 km of steep uphill switchbacks, we reached the top, exhausted, and continued on the flat ridge for about 1 more km. At this point the path went slowly uphill for a few km until we reached the top of the hill. We stopped at a bench on the summit and had fish, liverwurst, peanuts, bread, dried apricots and various other things for lunch. After lunch we had another few km of walking on the ridge, this part of the walk had the most spectacular views. The next 3 km were by far the hardest, steep downhill slopes with loose rocks and earth to slip on. We had another break at the bottom of the hill and then had about three km to walk to the road where we could catch a bus back to Borjomi. The walk was about 18 km total and boy did we sleep well.

Georgia

Our bus from Yusufeli to Hopa was uneventful, as was our taxi from Hopa to the Georgian border. Upon arrival at the border we lined up to be stamped out of Turkey, with that finished we walked 500 metres to get stamped into Georgia. We were stamped in no problem, check our passport, compare our photo, stamp the passport and “Welcome to Georgia”. The first thing I noticed once across the border was the soviet built Lada cars parked on the side of the road, the second thing was the weird Georgian script that I would be learning and third were the cows that roamed free like in India. Georgia is an interesting country. It does not feel as modern as Turkey, and it's Soviet history is very apparent, whether it's the Lada cars, the apartment blocks, the statues of Josef Stalin on many street corners or the 5 dollar a litre Vodka. The reason that the Stalin statues remain (even when the country bears no trace of statues of Lenin) is that Stalin was a local lad, who became the leader of one of the most powerful country’s on the planet. When we arrived in Batumi the first thing we did was go to a restaurant to look at the map of our Batumi on the computer. When we walked in with our big bags everybody stopped and stared at us, not used to backpackers in the part of the world. When we sat down they all returned to their food and the man at the table beside us said “Welcome to Georgia”. We talked a bit and found out that he was from Iran and here on holiday.

June 5^th and 6^th 2011

Our 7 hour ride in a “Marshutka”(15 seat minibus) was uncomfortable but it worked, as we are now in Tbilisi. Our bus driver was a bit of a speed demon and driving in Georgia was the same as in India but twice as fast. Anyhow, Tbilisi is an interesting city, the old town is very nice, but not very upmarket, it looks like it's all falling apart. The cliffs along the river are littered with nice old churches. We wandered up onto the east bank to visit the massive cathedral, home of the Georgian orthodox Patriarch. The cathedral was very big, the floor space was not very large but the ceiling was incredibly high, it looked bigger from outside though.

June 8^th

We woke up early today, had muesli for breakfast and politely declined the slurring Russian's offer of “Do you van' drinkin'?”. We walked down to the metro, went 3 or 4 stops to Didube bus station. Upon arrival we were questioned about our destination by a taxi driver, we told him we were going to Gori, but not by taxi. He said that was fine and that he would show us to our Marshutka. He took us there and told us that the cost would be 10 Lari each, knowing that that price was insane we walked away, however the bus driver came running after us yelling “5 Lari! 5 Lari!”, so we went back, confirmed with a few other passengers that this was indeed the right price and started on our way to Gori. In case you didn't know, Gori is famed for being the birthplace of Josef Stalin, feared dictator of the USSR for over a quarter of a century. Our reason for visiting Gori was to see the Stalin Museum which is beside Stalin's birthplace, a small mud brick house, protected by a temple like structure in a park where all the other houses were demolished. It was fairly expensive to visit the museum, 15 lari each including mandatory guide. The best way to describe the museum was “Weird”; it told the tale of a poor local boy who helped defeat the tsar and was one of the key figures of 20^th century politics. Not that of a repressive dictator who sent millions of people to their deaths. The tour went a bit like this - “ThisisapictureofyoungStalinthisisapictureofStalinwithLenintheseareStalinsschoolbooks etc.”.One weird room was the room that contained gifts to Stalin from foreign countries, Stalin's coat, boots and the furniture from his office in the Kremlin. At one point I accidentally lent on one of the chairs, it gave me the chills thinking that Stalin and countless other famous politicians had sat in that exact same chair. The creepiest room is empty other than a circle of columns surrounding a pedestal on which sits one of Stalin's nine death masks. A more realistic room was the “Room of Repression” It talked a bit about the Gulag but it never blamed Stalin directly, just the Bureaucrats who directly sentenced the “Spies”. After our dose of reality we left the museum building and visited Stalin’s birthplace and childhood home, which was fairly humble considering his future. The most interesting part of the museum was probably Stalin's train carriage. We took a photo of Stalin's toilet and I got to sit on his bed. It was amazing to think that this carriage brought him to the Yalta conference and many other conferences and key occasions in 20^th century politics. With our museum tour finished we went for a walk around town. On our walk we noticed the square apartment blocks,wide streets and old cars. It was exactly what we would have imagined the soviet union to have looked like. We also noticed the bullet holes in all the buildings, left over from the 2008 Russian invasion.

Yalta Conference

Kremlin furniture

Entry hall

Stalin's house

Stalin's toilet

Goreme - Yusufeli

30^th of May 2011

We were a bit reluctant to wake up after our day on the bikes, but by 8:30 our stomachs couldn't take it any more and we had to go for breakfast. The hotel owner served us some sort of molasses that was made out of grapes and sweet peas, it wasn't really my cup of tea, although the delicious Turkish tea sure was. When we had finished the molasses, we walked to the Goreme open air museum, the admission price of 15 lira (10 dollars) made us a bit unsure but because it was “the” sight to see in Cappadocia, we decided to go anyway. There were lots of rock cut churches with very impressive frescoes although you had to wait in line because of the many tour groups. We had a watermelon for lunch and then Mhari and Dad went back to the hotel while Mom and I took a minibus to Nevsehir. From Nevsehir we took another bus to Derinkuyu, home to the underground city. The city was dug a long time ago by some people to hide from other people, it was then used by different people to hide from other different people who then turned it into a museum. The admission is a lot but it's worth it. There were a ton of tiny tunnels leading into unlit mazes of rooms and the main staircase goes down 8 storeys. From the bottom you can look up the ventilation shaft to the tiny spot of light above you. There were a few tour groups at the start but later on it was mostly empty making it a bit spooky for going down to places such as the graves.

31^st of May - 2^nd of June 2011

From Goreme we took a bus to Kayseri and bought train tickets for the 2am to Erzurum, a 16 hour journey. We had about 12 hours to spare so left our bags with the snack shop owner and walked downtown. We spent about 2 hours in the Bazaar, the second largest in Turkey, I bought a Kayserispor Football club scarf that has something in Turkish written on it. With a dictionary and a travelling linguist we met later on, I figured out that it includes the words “fall down” and “reciprocal love”. We also spent an hour chatting with a carpet salesman who told us that he thought backpackers were “low-quality tourists” because they did not buy carpets (he didn't know we were backpackers). We returned to the train station and sat around all night because the train was late and arrived at 7.20am, not 2am. We got off in Erzurum at11pm after a spectacular ride. We only stayed one night, We saw the beautiful “Çifte Minareli Medrese”, reminiscent of “A Thousand and One Nights” and got on a bus to Yusufeli.

3^rd of June 2011

Yusufeli is an interesting town, there are far to many hair salons and cay shops, and the restaurants all close by 7pm. We managed to find one place open serving pide (turkish pizza). When we asked what kinds of pide he had, he replied “Meat or Cheese”, he then hesitated before adding “Meat and Cheese” not health food by any means. We ordered one of each and they turned out to be very good, and for 3 lira (2 bucks) per pide, a bargain as well. Today we went for a walk up into the hill, we stopped near a stream to eat apricots and made a series of dams to divert the water flow. We returned to the pide place for lunch and are now napping or blogging.

Goreme

28^th May 2011

I have written about our time between Orhaniye and here but because it's on paper I don't have time to type it all out at the moment, maybe I will post it later, when I have time. So basically, from Antalya, we took a night bus to Nevesehir and then a quick bus ride to Goreme. The night bus was good but I only slept for 1 hour. Eventually I gave up trying to sleep and just watched movies. I watched one movie about Turks in America's wild west, and one about Americans in Turkey's wild east, I'm not kidding. They were both in Turkish but I got the gist of things. At about 4 am we figured we should try out the bus's Wi-Fi and sure enough, it worked very well. I don't think I will ever be able to travel by bus in any other country ever again, “What, no snacks, no tea, no Wi-Fi?”

Upon arrival in Goreme, we searched high and low for a reasonably priced hotel, when we found one, we had lentil soup for breakfast and went to sleep.

I guess I should probably now explain why we are in Goreme. Goreme is the tourist hub of the region of Cappadocia, the main highlight being the landscape. A very long time ago, there was a volcanic eruption, slowly, erosion wiped away the volcanic rock and only the “tuff” (which the book describes as “consolidated volcanic ash” basically a soft yellow stone) remained in solitary pillars. What all this means is that the landscape is dotted with huge cones and pillars, a lot like the hoodoos in the Badlands of Alberta.

When we woke up at 2pm we went for a nice walk, had supper and then went back to bed.

29^th of May 2011

Today was bike day, we got 4 nice mountain bikes and headed out on the road to Çavuşin. On our way we stopped at Love valley. The fairy chimneys here are have particularly umm... interesting shapes, it is also a nice place to go for a walk through the vineyards. The next interesting place we went was Çavuşin village. There was an extremely large fairy chimney here that doubled as a castle. We had a very bad lunch here and then took a donkey cart track to a valley that started with “P” this one was like Love Valley except it had more tourists and was therefore more accesible. It was a short ride to Zelve open air museum, an abandoned rock cut village. It was a monastic retreat from the 9^th to the13^th century and then a village from then until 1952 when it was deemed to dangerous to live in. There were some nice old churches here and the monks quarters were interesting because you could see things like where the window frame was and where the bed was. The highlight of the museum was definitely the system of narrow tunnels that connects one valley with the next. The steep staircases and pitch black corridors were indeed very spooky. Our last stop of the day was the Devrent Valley, a 3km uphill slog. We had a look a the fairy chimney shaped like a camel (it wasn't really) and then flew back down the hill to Zelve. The rest of the ride was slowly uphill and hard at first but the last bit was easier

Hot air ballooning is a very popular activity

Downtown Goreme

These ones look like, ummmm... Rocket Ships.

Fairy Chimneys

Does that look like a camel to you?

Istanbul and Orhaniye

On the Bosphorus

I spent my 14^th birthday (May 13^th) on the Bosphorus Strait. When I woke up that morning I was greeted with pistachio baklava and pistachio Turkish delight. We had seen a place down the road that did a breakfast buffet for 10 lira but we thought we'd stick to 1 lira lentil soup. We went to the docks and got on the public cruise going all the way up the straight. We saw many mosques, palaces, bridges and forts. The cruise was great and we had fish for lunch. That evening I had pistachio birthday cake (by the way, I love pistachios and Turkey grows some of the best). That evening we splurged on supper and went to the same Lokanta we go to every night. A filling meal for four with tapioca pudding, 20 lira, about 15 dollars (okay so maybe not quite a splurge but it's some of the best food I've ever had).

Orhaniye

We took an overnight bus From Istanbul to Marmaris, and a Dolmus (minibus) to the small coastal town of Orhaniye, where we met up with Terry Anthony, a relative of ours. We spent three full days there, we did lots of hiking, and the water was very warm so we swam a lot. The village is set in a bay, surrounded by huge mountains; it was fun to float in the bay and stare up at the mountains. The hikes were also beautiful. One day we went up to an ancient amphitheatre and temple which had amazing views over the bay. We also saw lots of tortoises, lizards and goats. One herd of goats ate cucumber from our hands.

Istanbul days 3 and 4

May 11^th 2011

After our standard bowl of lentil soup, we took the tram from Kabataş to the Grand Bazaar. We found a public toilet outside a nearby mosque and I watched a crazy homeless man with 7 dogs while the rest of the family went to the bathroom. We walked around a bit until we found the book bazaar, it turned out that they didn't have what we were looking for so we braced ourselves and went into the Grand Bazaar. The Bazaar was in fact quite manageable and not too busy, a pleasant surprise. Most of the shops were touristy, and also expensive. At this point, Dad, Mhari and I spilt up with Mom so that she could shop as much as she wanted without us telling her to hurry up. We found our way out of the Bazaar only stopping for me to buy an awesome t-shirt (picture below) and went looking for a kebab shop. About 15 minutes later we found one on a street that sold nothing but plastic toys made in China. With our bellys full we climbed up the hill to Sulemaniye Mosque, apparently the grandest Mosque in Istanbul. It was indeed very grand, about as big as Blue Mosque, except pleasingly simple in decoration, other than the great stained glass windows. We got lost in the streets around the mosque which were full of old wooden houses, and ended up at the viaduct, we popped into another mosque, this one painted like an easter egg inside, and walked back to the Bazaar. On the way home I had a Simit (sesame seed bread ring) and a Dundurma (ice cream with a very elastic texture, you have to bite it or else you might just pull it off the cone) for 1 lira (65 cents) each. That evening we went back to our favourite Lokanta and had 8 mezzes and 3 rice puddings for 19 lira (11.50 dollars).

May 12^th 2011

Today we didn't know what to do so we decided to hop onto a ferry to Kadikoy, on the Asian side to see what it was like. We stopped at a pide (Turkish pizza) shop and had tea and pide, we also went to a very cheap bookstore and stocked up on reading material. This afternoon we went to the Military Museum to watch the Ottoman Military Band, which plays every day from 3pm to 4pm. Of course, due to some UN conference, they were not playing between the 1 and the 18^th of May - typical. The museum was nice though, they had 3 big rooms with nothing but swords, each sword had a plaque underneath it that said “Sword”. When we were done with the swords we wandered through Defence Weapons (shield, helmets etc.) in halls 1-4 and then came across a model of a Turkish military classroom, complete with 15 life size students. Each one was wearing a fez and raising his right hand, except for the 3 trouble makers in the back row who were raising their left hand. We also found a set of furniture made entirely from weapons. On the top floor there was quite a bit of Propaganda, including a room full of pictures of Turks who were massacred by Armenians, and another room full of weapons that were “Used by the Greek Cypriotes against the Turks”. 

Grand Bazaar

More Grand Bazaar

Sulemaniye Mosque

Mosque carpet

Sulemaniye Mosque

Prince Mosque

Big Door

Prince Mosque

Bigger Door

My favourite time of day

Cool eh!

Sword

Don't sit down, it's sharp

Istanbul days 1 and 2

We spent another day in Pamukkale, exploring the nearby ruins of Laodika, home to one of the seven churches mentioned in the Book of Revelations. The weather was beautiful, the poppys plentiful and the tour buses had mostly skipped it. There were tons of lizards and some of the clay pipes that had once carried drinking water were visible. The theatres were interesting, because they were just theatre shaped dents in a hill, with a few rows of benches scattered here and there.

May 9^th 2011

Today was our first full day in Istanbul. We woke up around 8 am and went for a breakfast of lentil soup with mint and lemon and all you can eat bead for 1 lira (75 cents) at a nearby “Lokanta”, a restaurant serving “mezzes”, which are small plates of food, a bit like “tapas”. We walked east from Taksim square to the Bosphorous and hopped on the tram. When we arrived in Sultanahmet, (historical heart of the city) we stood around in the park a bit, marvelling at the Blue Mosque and Aya Sofya. When the effect wore off we wandered over to the Blue Mosque, stood in line for a minute or two and then entered the Mosque. The inside was indeed spectacular, covered in blue Iznik tiles, the huge dome was quite something. There was a nice carpet on the floor and an assortment of gilded medallions with Arabic on them. After 20 minutes of ooing and aahing, we left and headed towards its somewhat more ancient neighbour, the Aya Sofya... only to find out that it is closed Monday. Disappointed, we ambled in the direction of Topkapi palace. We bought our expensive tickets and went to explore the palace. The courtyards were beautiful and in the treasury, there were probably more precious stones and metals than there are in all of Canada. Dad and I also went into the Harem, (an extra 15 lira!) where the sultan, his family and his concubines lived. There were lots of fancy decorations and it reminded me of french chateaux. The mother of pearl and tortoise shell cupboards were quite something. We walked back home, stopping for a fish sandwich on the way.

Back at our hotel, we slept for a bit and went for supper at the same place we went to for breakfast. We had 7 plates of Mezzes (mezzes are substantially bigger than tapas, most grown men order one or two plates and some rice) and 1 plate of Baklava for 14 lira (9 dollars), I think we'll be coming back to this place.

May 10^th 2011

Another morning, another bowl of lentil soup, another tram. We got off at Aya Sofya, decided to wait till 4 pm when the crowds had left and walked to the Istanbul Archeological Museums. The Museums were great, tons of exhibits and very well laid out. The highlights were the incredibly well preserved sarcophagi and the Roman tombs that had been translated into English. Most of them read something like this...

“This tombstone was built by ______ son/daughter of _____ for their mother/father/cousin etc who was a builder/priest/teacher etc. who was known for his/her virtues/beauty/hard work.”

Although some were more dramatic, such as this one...

“ Meandros, son of Meidias farewell!”

“Oh Meandros, son of Meidias, why are you walking the most painful road that has no return, leaving sad tears for your son?

Your wife Moschion is wailing, your sister is lamenting. You have been suddenly killed by the power of an unknown man.

Go away, the worst of unfortunate deeds! Why have you extinguished unseasonally this refined person, taken by Ares who ends lives.”

Some other highlights in the museum were the hundreds of sculptures and the exhibit on the history of Istanbul, which contained the chain that was used to stop ships sailing up the Golden Horn (the other water way in Istanbul).

When we arrived at the Aya Sofya, the lines were much shorter than before. We bought the tickets and headed on in. The Aya Sofya you see today is the most recent of a series of churches built by Byzantine empires. The current one was commisioned by Justinian and finished in 537. In the conquest of 1453, it was turned into a mosque, it stayed that way until 1935 when Ataturk decided to proclaim it a museum. Inside was spectacular, the dome was massive. We had been expecting scaffolding because of restoration, but due to Istanbul's title of European capital of culture 2010, the scaffolding has been temporarily removed and the building was indeed awe inspiring, we wandered around for about an hour, admiring mosaics and staring up above us. It took a while, but we managed to pry ourselves away from this truly monumental building after about one hour. On the walk home, Joe will be happy to know that my dad had his leatherman knife sharpened by a man with a motorized grindstone on wheels.

Laodika

A lizard in Laodika

Nice Sarcophagus

Great Museum

Blue Mosque, the windows top-center, are all along the bottom of the dome

Blue Mosque courtyard

Lunch

Topkapi Palace

Nice View

In the Harem

Just fooling around

A cupboard in the Harem

Stained glass in the Harem

Yeni Camii

Inside Aya Sofya

More Aya Sofya

The dome

That row of windows, barely visible at the top of the photo is as close as I got to getting to floor and the dome in the same picture.