Remembering Istanbul - the final destination.

This weekend we have dear friends heading off on their 99 day overseas adventure. Seems being subjected to friends travel stories has taken it's toll and they are determined to have their own stories to torment us with. Have a great time guys!


Of course we happily shared our travel stories with them and we were asked why we hadn't finished off our travel stories about Turkey.Ah Turkey! As we sat in the afternoon sun on our deck, eating warm chocolate chunk brownies and reminiscing I was surprised with the rush of emotion I felt while discussing Turkey. Of all the places we went this is the one country I long to go back to the most. We had debated going to Turkey, tossing up between Istanbul and Cairo and I am forever grateful that we chose Turkey and ended our journey on such a high note.


Yes all of the travel stories, well most of them, have been told but I had held off on Turkey.I said it was time, in that I didn't have enough of it, but that isn't entirely truthful. There have been plenty of opportunities that I could have blogged about our final destination.


Truth betold when I went to write about Istanbul I found my hands just hovered over the keys. Never being one to force posts, to me that's not what is about, I waited.


And waited. I had all the facts about the city but there was something about Turkey that held me back. Perhaps because it was the end of our journey. Perhaps because there was so much emotion tied to the city. Perhaps because it was such an exotic, intoxicating place that I felt I couldn't do it justice.


So I never finished the posts. As close as I came was our 'funny now but not at the time' visa fiasco. I even asked Nick to do the final blogs, knowing that was never going to happen.


I read other travel blogs for the phrases they used and still came up with nothing that really said what I wanted to say about Turkey.


Instead as I dragged my toes I found that the facts just slipped away.


Now I could go and read up on places to ensure I have the factual names and dates for architecture that we visited but that isn't how I want to write. Names and dates don't describe the amazing feeling that comes over you when you stand in a holy place, even one of a different faith, and feel yourself as part of something greater. Facts and details don't describe the warmth of the people and friendliness of the locals in the bazaars. Anyone can go to Wikipedia for standard facts. The whole purpose of our travel blog was to share the experiences as we had them. The trouble was we found Turkey so phenomenal, so overwhelming, so beyond our poor descriptions that making things up now and trying to remember how we felt at the time 18 months later just seems dishonest.


I have struggled with how to finish off the posts about Turkey because we wanted to turn this blog into a book. Print off and bind the travel stories so we could read them to Aurelia when she was older and she would have a collection of the experiences. I wanted a worthy conclusion to our journey.


But instead I choose a less wordy,honest closure because in reality the journey is not over for us. We will always be travelling, desiring to know what new experiences lay over the horizon.


So I will end the posts on Turkey with the information I can recall and lots of pictures because don't people say pictures speak 1000 words


Picture posts to come