Jump around

Time to reveal what will probably be our last vacation sort of adventure here on this side of the world. We're off to:

OK, so ironically those are Thai Turkeys. But NO, we are going to the Turkey, land of the Turks, the Assyrians and Hittites, the Roman, Byzantine and Ottoman Empires, unfathomable years of history, Christian and Muslim, Europe and Asia all melded into one facinating country.


In our frenzied anticipation, we supposed grownups of Gecko House have been singing the song Istanbul not Constantinople pretty much nonstop, and now Bethy has picked it up and bops away. I gotta learn the violin part from the Might Be Giants version one of these days...

Istanbul is where our plane will touch down this afternoon. We're going to soak in as much of the country as we can, meeting up with Mike's parents on the first day (yes! Not only do we love their company but they more than halve the parenting we have to do. SCORE!) and travelling Turkey for the first weeks of May, then heading over to Greece.


Aren't you glad I didn't post a photo of a greasy turkey?

Yeah, me too.


There is no way I could even start to explain to you how excited we are about this trip. When we came out here, Turkey was the one place, possibly even more than Petra in Jordan, that we said we would have to experience. And now we're going!

There will be little blog posts popping up on here while we're gone, and when we get back, oh, I will be telling you all about our journey.

For now, I am dreaming about finding out, is there really a difference between Greek and Turkish coffee? I know I'm not, under any circumstances, to say that to countrymen of either continent...

To experience Turkish coffee in Turkey. I relish the thought. Mmmmm.

And we should be in Istanbul for the end of the Tulip Festival. I wouldn't have gotten to see any in Spring this year otherwise; they don't grow here.

Tulips. In Istanbul. Bliss.