Travels, arrivals and settling in

Geocaching adventurers...

After quite a few weeks of traveling around, staying in other people's houses, driving other people's cars, eating other people's food, having Abby and Josh involved in a wedding and going on a geocaching experience that was exhaustingly fun..........we finally bade farewell to the mountains of Lebanon.
Farewell to the heat, lack of electricity, crazy traffic,  friends and climbed on a plane to have an adventure in Turkey.

Lunch in Jbeil with some good friends

Bye bye Beirut......hello Istanbul.  Seriously one of the most amazing times in my life.  My husband spent many hours planning this holiday and we had a the greatest time.  We stayed in a modest hotel near the Sultanahmet and we were within 5 minutes of most of the touristic sites.

One negative thing about our hotel - well there were a few but the absolute worst was the COFFEE - it was disgusting.  One of the best things about our hotel was the air conditioning in our room.  We would have died without it....
We walked around late at night - in fact the best time to be out and about was at night.  Cooler!
The place was seething with people....absolutely jam-packed streets.  It was the height of Ramadan so the restaurants offered iftaar everywhere and you just had to pick the deal you wanted.

Standing outside Haggia Sophia

Thankfully none of us got tummy bugs - our tummies must be used to Beirut food.  Some of the places we visited included:  Blue Mosque, St Stephens Basilica, Grand Bazaar, Turkuazoo, Cruise down Bosphorous etc etc.

It was one of the most exciting places we have visited and i will not forget this time in Istanbul for a while I can tell you.  Oh I also found Starbucks so managed to find some decent coffee eventually.

Finally it was time to say goodbye to the bustling city of Istanbul with it's beautiful markets and mosques.  We arrived in FREEZING cold Cape Town a week ago and have been rushing around ever since.  Hopefully I will post more often although we have not moved into our house yet.  Life is going to be very different here.......full of challenges but maybe it is time to move out of our comfort zone?