Travelling Trappies

As-salaam 'alykum Well you know you’re back in Africa when the taxi looks like it’s held together by sellotape, road rules are really just suggestions and taxi’s plus people follow you along the road trying to give you a lift/sell you something! I had kinda forgotten about the constant harassment you get here!  But more about that later.   Our taxi from the airport When I last wrote, we were picking up a car to head to Canakkale for a few days to visit Gallipoli and Troy. It was a bit of a haul getting down, half of which seemed to be going round the outskirts of Istanbul!! But we arrived to our apartment, which was in a great location, had cheap parking round the corner and a lift. In keeping with our budget, like the hotel in Istanbul, it was fairly basic, but serviceable and we found a small grocer round the corner to grab some essentials. Canakkale has, I think, the most coffee shop/bakeries I’ve ever seen and they’re open till midnight and packed with locals. The bars on ...

  Türkiye'den selamlar (greetings from Turkey), well Istanbul to be more precise. We’re almost at the end of the first leg of our Turkey trip and until today the weather gods had not been very nice – requiring a search to the depths of the case to find our ‘more wintery’ clothes!   But I’ll get back to that shortly. Picking up where I finished the last blog: after a quick stop in Heraklion on Crete, we jumped on the boat to Naxos – about 3 and a half hours away. It was a fairly calm crossing stopping at Santorini on the way to drop off and pick up passengers. Coming into Naxos was magical – just like you imagine a Greek Island to be. White washed buildings climbing up the hills, waterfront cafes/bars/restaurants, outdoor dining, shops with brightly coloured clothes and cobbled roads. We stayed at the Naxos Beach Resort about 100m from a very nice beach and although the temps had dropped, we were still able to enjoy a stroll along it and a couple of hours lying in the sun! I br...

Χαιρετισμούς από την Ελλάδα (Chairetismoús apó tin Elláda – Greetings from Greece). It is just as well that a lot of Greek people speak English because their alphabet (which all road signs, instructions, shops and descriptions use) is VERY hard to interpret!! We have a supermarket underneath our apartment and have to google translate to work out what everything is. We went to the counter with what we thought was washing powder (based on the pic on the container) but it turned out it was washing machine cleaner!!! Luckily the check out woman spoke English and said she didn’t think this was what we were after!!!   We are loving Greece – great food, lovely people, sooooo much to see.   The fates were conspiring against us. With an ETA in Athens of 6am after a 4 hour flight with no sleep and a check in time of 3pm at the hotel, somehow our flight left on time, arrived early, immigration and luggage arrival were efficient and there were no customs to speak of! Our driver was ready...