Kemeralti market has been around long enough to have seen a few plagues ravage the globe. No surprise then I guess that things there were functioning as normally as one could expect. Built in the 16th century, the market in Izmir is not quite as old as the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul (the world’s oldest), […]

Turkey is balancing reopening their tourism industry with pandemic safety in a way that only a burgeoning autocracy can accomplish. It seems that plenty of people around the world have gotten the memo and descended upon the country. After my warm stay in Belarus, I had personally reached a point where Turkey was feeling like […]

Bangkok… Paris… Dubai… and then, a bit further down, just ahead of New York, is Istanbul, holding up the fourth spot of most visited cities in the world. I don’t know what the security situation was like a few months ago in the tourist section (Old Town) of Istanbul, but there is some pretty heavy […]

Our 4-year-old niece accompanied us to the airport when departing for this trip. At this point she has what I guess is a pretty age-appropriate understanding of our travels. With video calls and such, it probably never seems like we’re particularly far away.  We just hop on a “Hair-Plane” and the next time she sees […]