Goreme, Turkey, Europe I took a hot air balloon ride over Cappadocia today and it was incredible! It started with a ridiculous 4:20am wakeup call, but it all ended up being worth it. I was picked up at my hotel at 4:45am and I was the first one in the van. We went to a few other places to make some pick-ups. The first people we picked up were two Colombian sisters who are travelling together. They were lovely. They…
Goreme, Turkey, Europe I got to see Cappadocia today and it was brilliant! The day started out with a pretty good breakfast at the hotel on the terrace overlooking the village of Goreme. My tour guide picked me up at 9:30am with three Chinese girls from my hotel too. We got on the bus to find out the rest of our tour group consisted of four more Chinese people, and two Koreans. That is a pretty good representation of what…
Goreme, Turkey, Europe I got up today to see it was yet again raining in Istanbul. Apparently this city just doesn’t want me to see it in all its glory. No bother, I had to get packed up and get myself to the airport anyway. I caught a couple of trams and made it to Ataturk airport with plenty of time to spare. My flight to Kayseri went as scheduled and I sat next to a really nice girl on…
Istanbul, Turkey, Europe Istanbul. Is. Awesome!!! I’d been here four years ago and wasn’t crazy about this city, but I think it was more to do with the circumstances than anything else. It was cold and rainy when I was here and never really found any other tourists around to talk to. It was a pretty quiet five days and I wasn’t exactly itching to come back. Now I wish I had more time to spend here. I started out…
Istanbul, Turkey, Europe Today was pretty much a complete travel day. I left the hostel in Amman at 7:15am in my taxi. I was happy to see the driver was at the hostel and ready to go at 7am, so I didn’t have to wait around for him. It was about 35 minutes to get to the airport, which was a lot quicker than I had expected, so I was really early. It’s probably a good thing though because there…
Amman, Jordan, Asia Today was another relatively quiet day in Amman. I got up to find out that the UCONN women won the NCAA tournament last night, so both UCONN basketball teams are champions again! I saw this happen in 2004, but never really thought I would see it again. Very impressive! I went out for a bit today to check out the sites but there really wasn’t much to see. I saw the Citadel and the Roman Amphitheater. Neither…
Amman, Jordan, Asia I got up at 4am today to watch the NCAA National Championship game. It might sound ridiculous to get up that early, but UCONN was playing Kentucky and there was no way I was going to miss that! It ended up being well worth it too when UCONN won their fourth championship in 15 years! What a great start to the day!! After all that excitement, I packed up my stuff, grabbed a quick bite to eat…
Wadi Musa, Jordan, Asia Today was a very cool day at Petra. It started out with an early wake up call, and breakfast at the hotel. I got the 7:30am shuttle to Petra and started walking in at about 7:45am. This is the best time to go because there were hardly any people there, and it wasn’t too hot at this point. It was much more comfortable than starting a hike at 2pm. I hiked up past the tombs today,…
Wadi Musa, Jordan, Asia Today wasn’t as big of a day as yesterday, but it was still pretty good. I decided that since I did so much walking yesterday, I would start out a bit later today and go on a smaller trek. I caught up with some stuff I had to do this morning, had a good breakfast at the hotel, and then headed over to Petra at about noon. This was terrible planning on my part of course,…
Wadi Musa, Jordan, Asia Today was absolutely incredible! I got to visit Petra for the first time, and it did not disappoint. I started out this morning at El Rashid Hotel and had a quick breakfast and moved my stuff back up the hill to Rocky Mountain Hotel. I couldn’t check in, but I left my bags and walked down to Petra. It was about a 25 minute walk through Wadi Musa to get to the visitor center. I bought…