Which Was Your Favorite Country?

It is sad to hear about what's happening now in Egypt. I take no pleasure in reminding you that I predicted in my blog that it will be a long and tortuous road toward a decent society. Give credit to the people in power anywhere - they make reality much worse than the worst nightmare. We are so lucky to have made it there last November and so glad that we didn't listen to our doubts and outside advice and traveled there. Of all the countries that we visited it was the only one that we all liked in equal measure. We all rated it with an 8 out 10. Read on and you'd realize why this is as close to perfection as possible.

A graphic representation of our scoring results from February 2013

How can we answer the simplest question we got from everybody? Which country did you like best? It turns out that it is one of the most complicated. Four hundred sixty five days of travel, divided in 32 entities, with a duration varying from 42 days in Romania and 35 in India and Australia to 2-4 days in places like Macau, Dubai or Singapore. On a secret form each one of us had to give a grade from 1 to 10 to the countries we visited. We used the traditional Romanian rating system where 5 is the passing grade and 1, 2 or 3 are only given as a strong statement of rejection. My wife, Ileana didn't have any grade lower than 6 and I didn't have anything lower than a 5 for Hong Kong (not fair!) and Dubai. Meanwhile the kids were merciless. Ioan gave a 3 for Malaysia and Macau and a 4 for the trip to China with the grandparents. Ileana had a 2 for New Zealand and Hawaii, 3 for Australia (!), and several 4s, while Maria gave the only 1 in our ratings to Macau, a 2 to Southern China and a 3 to Hawaii. In my mind, if 5 is a passing grade, then 1 or 2 should be worse than hell, but to them it might have been a different measure.
We had China twice because it was such a difference between Beijing and Xian with our family in November and Guilin and Guangzhou in January. Also, we had two separate stints in South Africa, counted separately and Scotland and Dubai were seen by only 3 of us. The girls were in camp in Pennsylvania, rated as 7 by Ileana and 10 by Maria.

We had to compare apples with donkeys. Cities or wilderness, familiar or exotic, rich or poor, crowded or deserted, we've had it all, sometimes in the same country. Take India: we all liked it, but for some the tough days from the beginning left a more lasting impression than the perfect final days. How could Ioan give it a 7 is beyond my comprehension. Similarly we all scored Cambodia as a 9 with the exception of Ioan who gave it a 6. What more could a 12 year old ask for than Internet in an air conditioned room, French and Asian food at a restaurant, pool at the hotel, fish massage and playing on the best ruins in the jungle? He gave it a 6!

There was a significant difference between the raters, but all of us were pretty consistent. The children, more demanding, tended to score less. Ileana gave 10 to the exotic Nepal, Maria gave 10 to the familiar Romania and the camp. Ioan could not give a 10 to anything, he used the only decimal, a 9.9 to Romania. I gave four 10s, Japan, Australia, Greece and Italy, while my wife only one: India. Just look at these averages:

Totals for each of us with the corresponding average

Here, in detail, our whole scoring exercise

At the lowest end it is not fair to have Macau rated so poorly, but probably it was too short and too cold. The parents liked it, the children were not ready for it. Hawaii was the second worst, fittingly, considering that it was the only destination where we were forced to go against our will. In the end, Romania scored the highest but it should be disqualified because it didn't play fair: it involved time with our families, with the grandparents and the aunts and uncles and cousins and the lifelong friends. It included the winter holidays and Maria's 18th birthday as well as the excitement of getting ready for return home.

So the runners up are Egypt, Madagascar and Italy with 40 points. In the third place Tibet and Greece with 41. In the second place, with 42, we have Cambodia thanks to Ioan's reckless restraint.

The winner is India with 43 points. Fittingly, by far the most read post on this blog, is Ileana's "India, my love". But, more importantly, from what you read here, which was your favorite country?

Numbers and Money

My favorite saying is "a statistician drowned in a river with the average depth of 2 cm." Many people don't get it, but I use this in different situations, asking somebody to look at things from a different angle, or just not to take numbers or statistics too seriously. Anyhow, for reference, here are some numbers.

We visited 33 countries. One might argue rightly that I artificially inflated the number by including Tibet, Hong Kong and Macau, who some might consider part of China; Lesotho, which we visited on a day trip; France, where we spent a night in a motel across the Swiss border; Vatican, a tiny republic inside Rome; Saudi Arabia, where we only stayed 10 hours in the airport and it even includes Romania and United States (our home bases). I added all these places because they have different histories, cultures, currencies and/or borders and passport stamps. Even briefly, each experience was a special lesson for us. I think that the country model is way overrated, but unfortunately this is what we have in today's world.

North Camp of Mount Everest. China or Tibet?

Even by the most conservative count we went to Japan, China, Nepal, India, Cambodia, Thailand, Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, New Zealand, Australia, South Africa, Madagascar, United Arab Emirates, Great Britain, Austria, Czech Republic, Germany, Spain, Greece, Italy, Switzerland, Egypt, Turkey. We touched down on three continents for the first time in this life. We even went to the eighth continent and to what (some say) is left of Atlantis...

Airports - does anybody love them more?

We flew a lot. Many times because it was the only available option, sometimes for convenience, like in Madagascar, sometimes because it was the cheapest option, like in Greece, Italy or some places in Asia. We forfeited five flights with AirAsia, lost $630, but we didn't see it like that. We adjusted our schedule prolonging the vacations at Bottle Beach and in Bali. Overall we flew 48 times (50 for the girls), covering 123,549 km/76,770 mi (136,278 km/84,679mi for the girls, since they went for 10 days to the States in August). We payed $35,316 for plane tickets. I came a little over my initial budget, but a couple hundreds less than what Airtrecks, a round-the-world ticket consolidator, asked from us for one third of the flights mentioned above! This was the make or brake part of our budget. Interesting, if someone is flexible about her destinations, she can tour the world for much much less. For the distance that we covered and the number of flights we took nobody can do better than we did. I did the math, we payed 5.5 cents/km/per person (8.8 cents per mile). Double this figure if you plan your own trip, triple the figures if you buy tickets from some travel agency.

Renting a car can be cost effective for a traveling family

We used other means of transportation of course. I kept track of the meaningful day trips or travel between different areas by train, boat, bus, van or car. What we learned is that one meter, the international measure of distance, feels different on a road in Nepal or Madagascar compared to a highway in South Africa or Australia. And traveling by high speed train with 300 km/hour in China or in Italy is way different than going in zig-zag by boat on the Tsiribihina river. It is not fair to lump it all together, but anyhow the total number is 81 road trips. Some were two hours long, some were weeks in a row, like the car we rented for South Africa. Excluding the distance travelled by bus, taxi or subway within particular cities we still reached 40,000 km (25,000 miles) on the ground matching the circumference of the Earth at the Equator! I did the math, we payed 11 cents/km/per person (18 cents per mile).

We slept in 130 different beds. Most in hotels, a lot in rented apartments and at the end in Europe and especially in Romania we stayed for free with friends and family. Except for a handful of occasions we had 5 beds, and especially that 5th one added a lot to the total cost. Overall we payed $15.5 per night per person. That is not bad at all, is it? I did a little accounting trick though. Whenever we payed for something, a boat, a train or a plane, I counted that for transportation with the cost of the night at zero. We payed a lot for the cruise on the Nile or a boat on Tsiribihina river but I didn't include any of that for accommodation. In one way or another I marked 78 nights at zero and that changes the cost of a bed for us at $18.65 per person per night. We spent 7 nights in tents and 12 in chairs. That was not funny, believe me.

We rented apartments by the day in South Africa and so the food cost was negligible

The cost of food was partially affected by our accommodations. We payed very little or nothing in Romania where our families fed us. In many hotels we had free breakfast, where we had apartments we bought our food and cooked for ourselves. A more expensive apartment decreased the cost of food and a very cheap hotel meant eating at restaurants and spending more. The total came to $5.80 per person per day. How much do you spend at home? So many of my friends in the States who could "never" afford such a trip spend more than that for a latte and a panini, everyday! There is no bottle of wine that you could buy for this amount. Can you get a Big Mac meal in your country for less than $6? (In Switzerland it costs $14!)

This amount is not entirely true. If I subtract the days when we stayed with friends or family and assume that they also fed us for free, and also account for some of the free hotel breakfasts then we probably spent $7 per person per day for food. Is it a deal breaker?

This trip included a lot of additional expenses, and some of them were mandatory. We had to pay visas, several other fees and I included the immunizations that we had in Nepal and Thailand. The total of $4,235, could have been easily erased by going only to countries with no fees or visas like Malaysia, Australia, New Zealand or all of Europe. Yes, it was an optional expense...

One year ago, on my birthday, at the end of Africa. Visas were expensive but it didn't matter in the end.

We spend just a little more than that for all the miscellaneous occasional things that one could imagine. All the shopping, mail, Internet, replacement of broken iPods or stollen shoes, donations to beggars or charities or hair cuts came all to a little over $4,000 - that is not bad for five people on the road for 15 months, is it?

Included expense - trip preparation - a few books

And that brings me to the big chunk of "optional" expense that a trip like this entails. Amusements including all the museum or temple tickets, the fun rides, the guides, the cruises and so on. We spent a lot here, a little more than what we spent for food for our stomachs, this was the food for our souls. Examples include the Vienna or Sydney Operas, the helicopter ride in Hawaii, the scuba diving school, a trip to Lesotho, whale watching, and at least a hundred more things. We saved sometimes by skipping something outrageously expensive, like most activities in New Zealand, a National Park in Madagascar and the mummy rooms in Cairo. Generally speaking, we don't regret what we missed and don't regret most of what we did. Going over every blogpost from our trip you'd find where the money went.

Spending her 17th birthday at Taj Mahal, cheaper than the typical birthday party, still memorable.

You now have all the information you need to find out the cost of our trip. It was cheaper than I expected and we did it in the more expensive way. If you want to travel for a year with your partner and circle the world you should be able to do it for $40,000. Some young people do it for much less. If you have two little children you should add another $10,000. If you live in the first world and have a little more than primary education you probably can afford this. So why are you still home?

The Golden Pagoda in Kyoto, the first week of our trip.  Let's start over...

We Did It

We did it or we made it. However you want to put it we went around the world and we are back home in five whole pieces. We left Bucharest on Sunday afternoon, in the end of January. A short flight to Vienna, a change of planes to Berlin. A little adventure, I booked a hotel at the wrong airport, I realized at the last moment thanks to Ina. Overnight in Berlin, a short encounter with our friend in the hallway of the airport and we got on our last flight. At JFK we got a car and drove a couple of hours toward our house. We left the children to spend the night with a friend in New Jersey and we spend the last night in a hotel. Tuesday morning we drove a few more hours, stopped at Sam's club and Aldi for groceries. We spent $500 on supplies, for the first time in ages we didn't have to calculate how much we needed to buy, we just got everything that we could think of to resupply our pantry and fill our fridge. In the afternoon, we did the last few miles toward our house. It was epic. Unplanned, Louis Armstrong started to sing on the car stereo "What a Wonderful World". We did the last few miles singing and naming all the landmarks that we've learned so well on our way home. When we entered the house there was a lot of screaming and jumping. It took a few minutes of going through the house to recognize our home. In the evening friends joined us for pizza and champagne. It was epic. We did it, or we made it, however you want to put it, we went around the world!

At the airport in Berlin, AirBerlin carousel 

Hotel Bärlin in Berlin, just a big cheap room and one short night

Winter in Berlin from the hotel

This is our hotel 50 years ago behind JFK's limousine

Berlin Airport, last flight, last signage for New York

On arrival at JFK the welcome sign has Romanian as the top language!
Nice touch - thank you!

Done, we're in. No more passports necessary.

Above our rented car, the rest area has a sign to welcome us to New York State

Home. The planning board stayed just as it was 465 days ago.

Our friends left their map, flowers and another welcome back sign! Thank you!

It all started a long time ago with the thought that if others could do this, we can do it as well. Later it evolved into a strange feeling that we have to do it, we owe it to ourselves and to our children. By the time we left we felt that it is not such a big deal and any family who wants it can go around the world with their children.  More than a year later, as we approached the end of our trip we realized that what we were doing was extraordinary. Extraordinary as in out of the ordinary but also exceptional.

Is not just about numbers. We visited so many places and we walked so many miles. It's the incredible fact that we planned for the best case scenario and we made it happen. We were prepared for the possibility that we might not last this long, but we hit all our targets and we did everything we dreamed of in a special way. With the exception of Cape Town, we reached all our destinations at the best possible time of the year and in all cases at the best time of the day!!!  The only place that was on our list and we did not go to is Petra, in Jordan. We were close, in November in Sinai and we peacefully decided against it. The financials and the political situation were against it and we had to leave something for another time. As we were approaching the end of the trip we were exhausted. Maybe not that much physical exhaustion, maybe a mental one. Simply listing the places that we've seen would make somebody space out. Most of our families and friends lost track of us at one point or another and some of them got exhausted by just following us on the map. Once I caught a very close relative who had no idea on what continent we were and I'm sure he's just the unlucky one.

I would not advice anybody to try what we did. Do your own thing and follow your own interests. Definitely fly less and visit fewer destinations for a shorter or a much longer period. Our pace and our rhythm was exceptional and looking back I can argue that is not possible to do what we did. The only counter argument is that we did it.  There is a small club of families who travelled the world and probably a few that are doing it right now. What they did seemed simple when I read about it and now I know how special they are. Maybe we did travel longer, spent more, seen more, or maybe not, it does not matter. They are all extraordinary. As you plan and execute your own trip, what you'll do will also become extraordinary.

Did we see too much? I don't think so. We had this one chance and we made the most of it. We could have gone slower and shorten our list of destinations, we could have stayed for a shorter time. We have good reasons for why we did what we did. Like I said, we didn't start by planning to do something great, it just happened. We are the main beneficiaries, so there is no point in bragging about it. We were lucky, we were smart and we were well prepared. We never fought or argued, never questioned ourselves and never worried. We stayed healthy. Ioan had a cold every other day, but he took it in stride and never complained. The rest of us fared much better. On my part, the last day that I was under the weather was in Lhasa in November 2011. Ileana Ruxandra had a serious cold in Xi'an, we had to go to the hospital, the girls had some occasional colds but we never had something serious. Our stuff held on. In the last few weeks we had more and more problems with the cameras. In Madagascar, Maria's shoes were stollen. Besides this, and a lot of holes in the T-shirts, everything else worked out really well.

On the list of our extraordinary accomplishments I could also put this blog. With more than 260 posts, half a million words and more than 6000 pictures it is much more than one can handle. Despite the clean interface and the easy navigation options, most readers cannot find their way around, they read a post or two and go by their business. It is in part by design. Blogs are for the moment, only the last post matters and it stays on top. To start at the beginning it's generally inconvenient and hard to navigate. There is a science behind building a successful blog. Not only that I didn't look for that, but I avoided the general recipes and kept a low profile, this is for us and for you. Even if most of our friends and family members didn't read most of what's here there are a few who did and we thank them profusely. But now it's over and after posting the last few summary articles of this trip, I am thinking of taking this down. It is too much information, too much private stuff, too many of our personal pictures. What should we do?

There are a lot websites dedicated to travel. There are a lot of bloggers who make a living from telling us how great travel is. Some of them are families and they keep repeating over and over how extraordinary traveling with your family is. How the children learn from the world, how they grow more confident, more social, more intelligent. How this thing is going to mark them for life and they will always be grateful for such an opportunity. The truth is that we will never know if this is going to make them better or it will give them better chances. We are smarter, better educated and we have proof that we had an amazing time. This is the message of this blog.


We will never do this again. We would do it again in a heartbeat, but we only had one chance, we didn't miss it and now we are moving to another phase of our life. It is hard for me to understand why I never thought of this until 2009. It is easy to have second thoughts about spending tons of money on houses, home improvements, decent cars, or else. I am not allowing myself to go there. Again, like I said, we had one chance and we took it. Maria turned 18 in December 2012, she is now an adult, has her own life and I will never be able to pay her enough to sacrifice another year of her life to hang out with us. Ileana, getting ready for her 16th birthday, is talking about going with her girlfriends to South America, after she turns 18. Or maybe Europe. Or maybe somewhere else, but she is not even thinking of inviting us. Ioan is only 13. Maybe we'll have another chance to spend time like this on the road, we had a little preview in our week in Scotland. Maybe.

We realized early in our travel that we live in the best place in the world. While we were gone, our little village got engaged in a campaign to be named the "America's Coolest Small Town"


In a recent web article on Yahoo!Travel they listed our region along nine other lakeside vacations that have it all. Even with us back, I am sure that it will remain a very nice place. Surprisingly or not, we didn't find any other place where we would like to move. So we'll stay here.

Home with Emma. No better place in this world.

Our friends asked when and where are we going next time. My answer is that we are never ever going to leave our house again. I never ever want to travel again. We will stay home. I repeat this all the time, maybe I will believe it. But the other day at lunch we talked about a possible trip to Mars in 2018. For those who don't know me, I never joke about these things. Ask my wife and my children.

All Good Things Come To An End

We never got a surprise party. I never had a surprise party. We've never been part of one. We've seen some in Hollywood movies and more than once couldn't really understand how somebody can be so clueless to fall for it. I also couldn't understand what's the fun in it, but imagining how the others saw my face when they yelled "surprise!" was probably worth all the money and the trouble.

It was the last full day in Romania and absolutely nothing gave me any idea of what was about to come. We've spent almost six weeks here. We started with a few days away, isolated in the beautiful town of Sinaia. We needed rest and a period of adjustment, to the language, weather, family contact and holiday spirit. After that we had almost five weeks of more or less intense activities, including Maria's 18th birthday, Christmas, New Year celebration, visits with friends and families almost all over the country. We traveled by car and train, we stayed in five different places, we visited a couple of great cultural attractions.

Romania is an interesting country. It is not on everybody's list of dream destinations but invariably anybody who visits says that they had a great time, made great friends and they would come back. It has an interesting history, unique among all the European countries mostly because of the combination between the extremes, good and bad. Like most other countries it has a culture of exceptionalism, maybe not as bad as America, but nobody is as bad as America in that regard. What's special about Americans is that they genuinely believe that they are exceptional and they might have one or two arguments going in their favor. For Romanians it was probably a mixture between well organized propaganda and the lack of outside sources of information that produced a few generations, including mine, that really believed that we are the greatest nation on Earth. First, we had a civilized society that held its ground against the Romans when the whole world was under their command. Then, after being conquered, we became latins and were the only bastion of latinity left to hold the flag when Rome fell to barbarians. We were Christians as soon as possible, in the second century and later after the fall of Constantinople to the Otomans we were the only people who defended Europe against the invasion of Muslims, we protected the eastern side of the continent. When the Slavs came from the steps of Asia we were again the only ones to resist them and maintain our latinity. When the communists took over in Russia we were the first line of defense for the free, democratic countries of Europe.

And on and on it goes, the point being that when we realized that we might not be the most extraordinary people in the world - we fell in the other extreme. It lasted for a while and now we are surprised when we learn that we are not the poorest, most corrupt and most dysfunctional country on Earth. We are just there, in the middle of the pack. After touring the whole world I was positively surprised by how well Romania holds up compared to other countries. Go and visit. There are a number of interesting destinations and it can be fun any time of the year.

Typical contrast

Besides our visits with our families and friends we had a few short stops in Târgu Jiu, Sighișoara and Iași. We were a lot on the road and we could have stopped for a few days in several places. I guess we will have to do that at some point, maybe not in the winter.
In Târgu Jiu we saw a monumental complex by Constantin Brâncuși, one of the best sculptors of the twentieth century, a future World Heritage site. In Sighișoara we visited the old German medieval city, already a World Heritage site.

In Iași, Ileana's uncle gave us a quick tour of the monuments before the family reunion at a good restaurant. Then the children disappeared with their cousins for a few hours, they went skating and more, I don't know, I am glad they got back to the station in time for our night train.

Eventually we got back to Bucharest, the capital city and the headquarters for our families. We had fun and a little bit of too much talk about the future. When my father invited just the two of us (the parents) to a restaurant - his reason was that he didn't want my mother to spent her energy cooking. He left early to take the children to their other grandmother. My mom was going to take a cab with us and find this restaurant. We were running late. The cab driver just started his shift. He took us and then realized that he was out of fuel. His son, a good boy, took the cab the night before when he went to the bar with his friends. He returned the cab went to bed and forgot to tell his father that he emptied the tank. Maybe not a big deal, except that this particular cab was running on gas, and there are very few points to fill the reservoir with natural gas. And then, the driver had no idea where the restaurant was. We told him that it is next to the White Church, he didn't even know where that was! Thankfully he was a nice guy and followed our directions and got us to the restaurant only a few minutes late. My father already called several times very impatient. When we arrived a few minutes late, he was in the door with the maitre d'honeur, they both had very long faces. There has been a problem and we lost our table! Or something like that, I didn't get it, but then turning one short corner we found our combined families yelling "SURPRISE!!!"

Even our children were there, part of the plot. It was amazing, it was overwhelming. It was a celebration of our achievement and of their resilience. While we did the trip, something that nobody else has ever done before and something that none of them could have ever imagined possible, they were the ones staying behind to follow the news and to worry about us. Thank you!

In The City

Flying from Cairo to Istanbul, there is certainly a cultural shock. I didn't expect such a dramatic contrast, after all what's the difference between Egypt and Turkey?

We spent three weeks in Egypt, we've been everywhere and it would have only been fair to spend at least the same amount of time in Turkey. Surprisingly - it is the sixth most popular international touristic destination, ahead of Great Britain or Germany. Turkey receives more tourists every year than all South America, three times more than Australia and New Zealand combined, five times more than Japan or Egypt! People come here from all over the world to see various ruins, Cappadocia, seaside resorts and, of course, Istanbul. I guess all I can learn from the statistics is that we have a pretty good chance of a vacation in Turkey sometime in our future. At this point we look at it differently. With time and energy running out and the winter coming, we had to settle for just a quick stop. To get from Cairo to Romania it is cheaper to stop in Istanbul.

After the Romanian revolution of 1989 everyone got a passport and went to Istanbul. We never did. People came back with stories about a magnificent city and an incredible bazaar that had to be seen. I was left with the wrong impression of just a shopping Mecca. It didn't help that as children we learned a simple history of the world: "the Egyptians, the Greeks, the Romans, one thousand years of darkness and then the Renaissance." But now, at the end of our world tour we know much more and we can better understand the historical importance of this place. It could have been the most exciting destination on our trip if it wouldn't be such a familiar name.

The Ottoman Empire conquered Constantinople in 1453 and renamed it Istanbul, right? Wrong. The name was used even before that, but it only became official in 1930! The Turkish name, İstanbul, derives from the Greek phrase "eis ten/tin polin" (εις την πόλιν), meaning "into the City" or "to the City" or "in the City." The City. Capital C. The most important place in the civilized world. The only place that kept the ancient occidental culture going on while Rome crumbled to ruins and the western civilization passed through the dark ages. The place were they still had glorious emperors. The Christian holy place when Jerusalem became Muslim and the Pope was just a marionette of the tribesmen settled in what is now Western Europe.

Serpent column and Egyptian Obelisc

It started as a small greek colony in the 7th century BC. Byzas was the son of Poseidon and grandson to Io (and Zeus!). Pregnant Io chased by jealous Hera changed into a heifer and gave birth to Byzas' mother somewhere around here. In memory of his grandmother, Byzas named the small inlet of Golden Horn and the strait of Bosphorus. For unclear reasons he gave his own name to the colony, Byzantium. The next thousand years it was just one of the many ancient cities, but in 330 Emperor Constantine chose it to relocate the Roman capital. He wanted to be closer to the most important colonies, get away from the roman politicians, and he wanted a place that could be much easier defended against barbarians. He rebuilt the city and named it "New Rome". They referred to it as "Constantine's Rome" and later just as Constantinople. For the next thousand years it was the capital of the civilized world. Besides the natural defenses the city was massively fortified, protecting magnificent palaces, towers and domes. It was famed for its architectural masterpieces, some still standing. It was the biggest city in the world in the year 500, with 500,000 inhabitants. Today it has 11 million. You never hear its name mentioned among the biggest. Some don't even count it in Europe. But, surprisingly enough, it is by far the largest European city and it is the second biggest "proper city" in the world after Shanghai. It was an European cultural capital in 2010 and now it dreams of organizing the Olympics in 2020.

The whole center of the old city is designated as a World Heritage site. We met a nice young Ethiopian lady from Washington DC, in the line at the Blue Mosque. She dreamed of and saved for a European vacation. This was it for her "two weeks in Istanbul". It seemed surprising at first, but she was right, there is a lot to do and see here. We did everything that we had to do in three days. Ileana described it in her post here. I tried to go through all our stations myself, without success. It was hard for me to find words to talk about Hagia Sophia or about the Blue Mosque. These are incredible buildings. We probably liked even more the water reservoir. We liked the back streets of the old city and I liked shopping for food in the little kebab places. I loved the experience of a traditional hamam bath.

Making friends in 5 minutes, an Ethiopian lady from Washington DC

Hagya Sophia

The mosque of Suleyman the Magnificent 

Underground cistern, a water reservoir from the 6th century

Sarcophagus at the museum

We visited the "royal palace" Topkapi, which housed the sultan's court for four hundred years. Now one of the most important and impressive former royal palaces (turned museum) in the world - it has some astonishing exhibits. Several hundreds of years of history collected by the sultans. Turkey has an aggressive cultural policy arguing for the return of several of its historical treasures, especially ancient artifacts displayed in some western museums. The most interesting aspect of this argument is that Istanbul archeological museum and the museum inside Topkapi palace display invaluable items collected from all over the Ottoman Empire, from places that now are in some foreign countries like Syria, Saudi Arabia or Israel. They are not approaching anybody to try to give them back. The Ottoman Empire included and guarded for several centuries the tomb of the prophet. Among the most cherished relics are the cloak and the sword of Muhammed. We stayed in a long line to see those, but I was most impressed with an encased footprint of the prophet!

Topkapi palace, view toward the Galata Bridge

We crossed the Galata Bridge (in a cab), the bridge over Bosporus (in a bus) and we passed through the Asian part of Istanbul on our way to the "little" airport. Named after a Turkish lady, Sabiha Gökçen, the first woman fighter pilot in the world, one of the adopted children of Atatürk. Like I said, we did it all in three days. It was raining and it was cold for most of the time. There was a certain feeling of impatience as we were getting ready for the last leg of our trip, Romania. There was some lack of enthusiasm on our part, it is hard to describe it. We enjoyed the moments, but were a little bored with the whole process. We liked Istanbul and we liked Turkish people, but we might have had too much by this point. We need some rest.

Maybe at some point shopping in Istanbul could be fun

Bridge over the Bosphorus

Modern city in Asia...