Vancouver, Canada - hiking & kayaking

This past weekend we headed up to Canada on Saturday afternoon to visit our friend Markus. (Some cool stuff happened earlier that morning, but that's a separate post.)
After the relatively quick drive up and settling in at Markus' we headed to Burnaby Lake for a stroll. We walked around the nice big lake, hung out at the viewpoint, had a beer, and generally caught up on life since May 1 while getting to know his cool roommate Fred, also from Germany. I forgot to take my camera with me, but I stole this picture from the internet so you wouldn't feel shortchanged. We grabbed burgers with some other folks, had some wine at Markus' and didn't stay up too late because we were all running on 5 or so hours of sleep.

Sunday we made an awesome breakfast and dined outside in the sunshine. Then we headed to Deep Cove in North Vancouver. We hiked up to Quarry Rock. It was a pretty chill hike, but it was beautiful and fun. Markus tried to teach me some German words like 'brücke' (bridge) which is unpronounceable to the English-speaking ear, but other ones I picked up like 'stien' (stone). Maybe someday I will succeed in knowing more than a few useless phrases.

Matt, me, Fred

me, Markus, Matt

Yes, I made a daisy chain

Then we rented kayaks and kayaked around Indian Arm, hitting up a couple small islands along the way. Also beautiful. We invented a sport called water frisbee which is frisbee played from kayaks. Yeah, think about it.

Nothing like some salsa & guac out on the water

Frisbee time

By then it was dinner time and we headed in to downtown to meet up with Tomas for some sushi. Vancouver has some serious good affordable sushi. Seattle has some serious good sushi, but it's not very affordable. After that we hit up the Alibi Room, which if you've been to Brouwers in Seattle it's similar but smaller. About 50 awesome local beers on tap and a fun atmosphere. By then it was 10:30pm and we were slightly regretting our decisions by the time we arrived home just after 1, but the single question they asked us crossing back into the U.S. ('are you bringing anything back?') certainly helped and we were glad to have skipped the hour wait we had last time when went back mid afternoon.

This is only my third time in British Columbia since high school but I continue to be impressed by the city. Vancouver is a cool downtown surrounded by water and has a ton of outdoor activities within 30-60 minutes of downtown. And while it's another country it's only 2.5 hours from Seattle, which is really not far at all. Markus was a delightful host and we had a good time making some new friends while seeing new places. We'll be back.

Details, Details: Turkey

I decided to start doing a post at the end of the trip that had links and mini-reviews to the places we stayed and other services we used. Sometimes people ask me about places or are planning a trip themselves and I can't remember or find where I put the info. Now it's all right here. I'm going to try to go back and do the same for some of our older trips as well. Scoot on by for today if you're not interested in the details.

AIR
Airline that week took within Turkey: Pegasus Airlines. All flights were $25-45, service was decent and on-time and they have the funniest safety video in the whole world, which you absolutely must watch.

STAY (these were all between $30-60/night and were private rooms with breakfast included. All had private bathrooms except in Istanbul)
Istanbul, hostel we stayed in the first time: Metropolis Hostel. Would not recommend! Location is good but the only hang out area is their rooftop bar where you have to buy their insanely overpriced food/drinks to hang out + the people working there are not nice at all.

Cappadocia: Rock Valley Pension. Great place, one of my favorites from our travels. Lady managing the place gave us so much amazing info. Plus the rooms were nice and the pool & surroundings were amazing, along with the breakfast.

Ephesus (Selcuk): Kiwi Pension. Great rooms, good location, proprietress is a little pushy but very nice.

Fethiye, first time: Fethiye Guesthouse. Just fine, nothing special but no complaints + cheap.

Faralya: George House. Amazing place. Nice rooms, nice staff, awesome location at the top of butterfly valley, delicious food & dinner from their gardens provided.

Fethiye, second time: Pinara Pansiyon. The accommodations were fine, nothing special but the owner was amazingly nice and helpful and even picked us up at the bus station and dropped us off again for free. Great location, good feel.

Istanbul, second time: Lavanten Hostel. Just fine. Nothing special, but not bad. In new town, not old town though.

CAR
Car Rental: Europcar in Kayseri. Nothing special, but the best price we could find and they pick you up/drop you off at the airport.

BOAT
12 Islands cruise in Fethiye: We just walked down to the docks the morning that we wanted to go out and looked at all the boats until we found one that looked like what we wanted. You never know what you will actually get if you book beforehand so I would definitely recommend this method. We paid the extra $4 to be on a smaller boat and it was definitely worth is.

As far as I can remember those were the only things we didn't do on our own. We caught a lot of public transportation and did quite a bit of walking. I think all the locations are included in the main posts. We ate lots of very good food but nothing that stands out as a must-recommend. Obviously, a good guidebook is a valuable thing to have.


And now: back to North American life for the next 4 months. Shame.

Istanbul II: Bosporus cruise + bazaaars

Did you know that 13 million people live in Istanbul? It's huge. Matt and I flew back in Saturday morning, caught a bus to a central square and then wound our (long) way down İstiklal Avenue to our hostel. İstiklal is a big shopping/walking street and it's cool but I had my backpack and was hot and in a hurry and we ate dinner there later too, but still there are no pictures. We dropped our bags and ran, grabbing the trolley this time and finally making it to the Eminönü ferry terminal in time to meet up with A&S again and go on our Bosporus cruise. The Bosporus is the river that runs through the middle of Istabul separating Europe from Asia (that's right, the city is on two continents and Turkey is mostly Asia so Matt can now check off five continents) and connects the Sea of Marmara to the Black Sea. We went north, stopping at about 6 little towns, eventually docking in Poyrazköy which is almost all the way to the Black Sea. It had some cute restaurants and a castle at the top of the hill, but a few too many tourists for my taste. You passed a lot of cool palaces, parks, and bridges along and the way, and for the price it was a great way to be out on the water for a day and see some countryside.

turkeys in Turkey. tee hee

Black Sea

Bridging Asia & Europe

Matt & I bid adieu to A&S Saturday night as they were off to the airport at the crack of dawn on Sunday, and spent Sunday wandering a few other neighborhoods of Istanbul and doing our shopping. We stopped by the Süleymaniye Mosque for a quick tour and then headed to the Grand Bazaar. Surprise! It's closed on Sundays. (Isn't Sunday supposed to be market day or something?). Luckily our other planned stop - the Spice Market - was open and was a smaller version of the Grand Bazaar with more spices. We spent half a day in the souks of Marrakech, Morocco last fall and from what we can tell the Grand Bazaar would have been pretty similar so we honestly weren't too put out. We picked up some great spices & turkish delight (it really is delightful) and then had a great last meal on the Galata Bridge before heading to the airport for our evening flight home.

Spice Markey

Lots of Turkish delight

spices

We discovered that due to some funky itinerary design that we had not previously noticed we actually had a night in London on the way home. As in, arrive 9pm, leave noon the next day. Useless for sightseeing, useful for sleeping on cold marble floors at Heathrow? We took the plunge and reserved a hotel room only to spend an hour getting soaked (yes, it was pouring in London, and no, we did not have rain jackets) walking around trying to find it. Oh well. Our flight left three hours late the next day, we missed our flight in LAX, managed to catch another one 2 hours later and arrived home safe, sound, and tired.

Sleepy much? :)

Overall we very much enjoyed this trip. Ashley suggested the location last fall and I admittedly was unsure about how interested I would be when she first mentioned it but I like A&S enough that I agreed anyway. It turns out she was right and we were very pleasantly surprised by how much we liked it. It was a great combination of relaxation, outdoors, history, and culture and everywhere we went was beautiful. There were lots of people who spoke no English and few who spoke great English but there were enough people that spoke enough English that we were just fine. Yes, it was a Muslim country and yes, the call to prayer happened 5 times a day including at 4:30 in the morning. Yet it did not feel anything like the culture shock that we experienced in Morocco last fall. While it certainly wasn't typical Europe it felt European in many ways. We met many nice, helpful people everywhere we went and felt safer than in most of the countries I have traveled to (which I admittedly don't stick to Europe so that's not necessarily saying much). 

Mediterranean Coast - 12 Islands, kayaking & a ghost city

One of the most popular things to do on the Turkish Mediterranean is to go on a Blue Cruise - a multi-day boat journey on a Turkish gulet. We almost signed up but in the end decided we didn't really know if it was our cup of tea to be in a confined space for days at a time with questionable strangers. Plus the reviews were such that some people amazing trips and some got suckered into some really bad boats/captains. We ended up visiting many of the same places by hiking down to the beaches and went for a one day 12 Islands cruise instead. It was a great to be out on the water for the day. Activities essentially included jumping off the boat, swimming in the water, a short stroll up a hill, lunch, and sunning ourselves. Again, most of the photos are on the waterproof camera...

Just a few of the islands..they weren't big ones

lunch time 

So clear I can see Matt 3ft down

Fethiye harbor

Gulets

The next day Ash & Steven headed back to Istanbul and Matt & I had one more day in the Fethiye area. We decided we would go to the ghost town of Kayaköy (Kaya) and try to find some kayaks from there. Kaya used to have a population of about 2000 Greek Christians, but during the Greco-Turkish war in 1923 they did a population exchange (send all the Christians to Greece, the Muslims to Turkey) and the town was subsequently abandoned. It's in a rather attractive state of decay and it was fun just wandering the hillside for a few hours with very few other people around.

Greek orthodox church in Kaya

From the Kaya hilltop - 500 abandoned homes

After that, we hopped a dolmuş towards Gemiler beach on a whim and a rumor that there might be kayaks. The beach itself was rather disappointing but a faint trail around the point ended up leading to some awesome sea-pools that I managed to convince Matt to lounge in with me for a while. We went looking for kayaks and found two rather sad looking ones. When we went to ask about renting them the guy said there was only one and when we insisted we could indeed see two kayak with our very own eyes he held up one kayak paddle and one oar. You know - like you would use for a rubber dinghy? When we asked how much it cost he just shrugged and said 'I give you'. (English was lacking). We weren't sure quite what that meant but figured that for a nominal fee we might as well try out the oar. Unfortunately there are zero pictures of the kayak adventure b/c Ash & Steven had their waterproof camera w/ them in Istanbul but we kayaked all the way around an island off shore. The water was crystal clear and the island had some amazing old ruins, many of which were now underwater and we pulled up the kayaks and went swimming at a few places, all with no one around. Success!

(Matt's a champ and the oar didn't turn out to be too bad)

Gemiler beach & St. Nicolas Island

(yes thats St. Nicolas as in Santa, he was a bishop in turkey) 

St. Nicolas Island. That's the one we kayak to/around later

'Oooh, that looks nice. honey! a hot tub!'

Matt: the rocks are kinda sharp to get down there....

Mackenzie: no seriously, it's nice

If you click to make it bigger you can see some of the ruins

We finished out the coast with a walk along the marina back in Fethiye at sunset.

Last Turkey post: Istanbul bosporus cruise & bazaars