Spent Xmas in Penzance with Gwyneth. Stayed at the Egyptian House as before and the highlights included the imprtant (and final) parts of the Montol festival with the appearance of Penglaz (or Obby Oss) and being selected to Mark the Moke. Also being able to finally visit the whole of St Michael's Mount since they decided on a bit of winter opening.
Thanks for all the brilliant pressies :)
Turkish National Day came with a mega firework display and since my apartment came with a mega balcony with a view ...
Stay with it to see the amazing curtain of fire from the Bosphorous Bridge.
A trip to Singapore for business, met up with the parents, visited Sungei Buloh nature reserve and a video of a lizard ...
In October, I went back to Crete with Gwyneth. We hired a car this time to get to some less accessible areas (nick named "the pram" since it was a tiny Kia but it managed to get across the mountians and some crazy roads) and we said for the whole week at Kato Zakros on the East Coast.
Kato Zakros is a very quiet village at the end of the road and is a really excellant place to spend an interesting week.
We spent most of the time sitting on beaches and eating with some additional visits to minoan and other sites.
Photos ... for those who wan to see ...
Ok - so I did not get to the actual Black Sea last weekend. This time I took advice and was recommended Ağva about 100 Km northwest of Istanbul.
The weather was attrocious - it was overcast in Istanbul but it was the sort of rain that overwhelms the windscreen wipers in Ağva.
I set out on the road to Şila - which is a reasonable mainroad. Just past Şila the road abruptly and without (any) warning turns into a narrow and twisting mountain road - with cows wandering about and more hairpins that barbers hsop. It wsa wet, windy muddy so, of course, I went into rally driver mode :) Luckily - I survived.
I spent a happy half hour in the cutpark watching the torrential rain sweeping across the beach - a happy English holiday habit - before making a run for the end of the pier and the shelter at the end. The Black Sea is surprisingly warm and (if there was less rain) I would have gone paddling.
After lunch at the harbour restaurant, I headed home and saw a sign for the coast road (and yes - I did manage to translate coast road in Turkish :). Stunning vies and curiously Irısh approach to road improvement (one minute two lane blacktop - the next a rutted farm track).
Finally I stopped in Şila which turned out to be a pleasant fishing town.
As usual - click on the picture below to see more :
Never having been up the Bosphorous towards the Black Sea I decide to explore and just drove until I ran out of road - although actually checking the maps I could have gone further I had known the way.
It is amazing just how short the distance is between the shiny skyscrapers of Levent and the (almost) countryside!
A few pictures from Rumelli Kavaği
I had a business trip to Atlanta and being me - rather than explore the city over the weekend I had a couple of brilliant days jumping out of planes!
The place was Skydive the farm about 50 Km from Atlanta and the setting and the people were fantastic. The arrangements are a little difficult - since you have to get a bus to the airfield and the dropzone is surrounded by trees which can certainly concentrate the mind on landing on the dz :) However - this has to count as the friendliest DZ I have been to. On my first day I was already in a 10 way :)
Video taken in Dubai by Radu of me skiing in Dubai.
Yes - I ended up in Dubai again!!
I have been travelling around a bit for the last few weeks - Gent for the festival and meetings in Dusseldorf and Vienna. However - you are lucky - no photos.
However - I have posted a video of my rafting trip on youtube and embedded below.
Another birthday passes and still only 21 (!).
We took a long weekend and drove West from Istnabul via the new fast ferry to Bursa to Assos.
Assos is a village built and off the remains of classical and Alexandrian town and is very evocative as well as relatively unspoilt. Most of the Temple of Athena has been taken to other places - such as Istanbul, Berlin and London. However - the acropolis with an unrivalled view of Lesbos is still a wonderfull place to be first thing in the morning. We stayed at the Assos Evi - one of the small guesthouses (which prefer the name boutique hotels these days). It was very quite and relaxed and I would recommend it to anyone.
Whilst there we also visited classical Pergammon and Troy before spending a day on Bozcaada (classical Tenedos). It was amazing just how evocative of Homer Troy really is and there is more than enough there for a good days visit if you wanted and could stand the tour parties. Not pictures from Troy since it has all been done before.
Bozcaada made a good wind down and is a nice small town and beach. The Venetian / Otoman castle is huge but largely empty. The harbour is a delight and the old greek town fun. However - it is very much a tourist place if mostly Turkish tourists weekending out of Istanbul and Izmir.
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Since there too much wind at the dropzone this weekend I managed to visit the traditional sites of Ephesus - the Roman city and the Temple of Cybele / Artemis / Diana.
Some Pictures are attached as usual.
A few pictures from a weekend trip to Iznik and Bursa just looking around really.
Iznik was historic Nicea (as in the Council of Nicea and the Nicean creed). It is a really pleasant and very sleepy little town next to a lake in the mountains - still with its town walls and many ruins. Nothing amazing but so pleasant I spent more time there than I intended.
Bursa is a much bigger place but still with some interesting stuff in the centre. However - the main attraction is Uludağ - the mountain behind Bursa. There is a complex of two consecutive cable cars and an ancient chair lift to get up the moutain from the city - which was fun - and in winter there is a ski resort at the top (although having seen this is summer I am sure that the ski resort in Dubai is bigger and that is in a shopping centre!).
Click the following
The Çoruh is one of the top 10 rafting rivers in the world and one of the fastest. It rips along at a healthy 10 kph and in the Yusifeli gorge you can see the gradient on the river!
There are a number of grade 5 rapids and an even bigger number of grade 4s :)
This was a trip organised by alterntif with one boat with 7 people (including Vedat) and two safety kayaks run by Hakim and Diaa. The other people were Ben and Paal (Australia and Norway respectfully) and Zafer, Eren and Nedim from Istanbul.
We had four unbelievable days of rafting and three nights of camping in the most appalingly bad weather - o well you can not have everything.
Click the following for my picture.
Best Piccıes My Piccies Ben's Piccies Paal's Piccies
One week a the end of March and there was still powder falling for some of the week - even if the off pıste was mostly off snow as well.
Wonderful way to spend easter!
Also spent a day on a wıldlife (mostly buffalo and Elk) safari to keep Gwyneth quiet. They do have a lot of very large animals in Wyoming - and I am not just talking about Harison Ford.
Definately a place to go back to.
Click the following for the slideshow
We went on holiday to east Crete - primarily Gwyneth's choice since she likes Crete and loves wandering around Minoan ruins.
The route was pretty much Iraklion -> Ierapetra -> Kato Zakros - > Sitia - > Iraklion. We travelled by bus and very good the buses were; fast, clean and cheap.
The highlights were - every thing to do with Kato Zakros which is a beutifull, quite (at least in October) and friendly little village at the East end of Crete with a glorious Beach and a small gorge if you are feeling more exciting. Also, Ierapetra was surprising nice for a mainly agricultural center and Iraklion is obviously heading towards being one of the nicer capitals in Europe.
There were a lot of photos from this trip - so I have one set (click on the thunbnail below - for the holidayish stuff and another further down for the hardcore Minoan stuff
This was my first time visiting Minoan ruins and I was surprised at just how much of the sites there actually is. Some of the sites are huge and there are genuine buildings and streets and even a small swimming pool.
Knossos is impressive but Gournia is much more fun - since it a complete town and much more plebeian. Of the sites - Founou Korifi near Ierapetra is the most atmospheric (I really did get the feeling you could see people living there) and Zakros is best situatıon and very well preseverved.
İf you want to see which is which in the following slide set - just click on the slide and see the details. There is a link in most of descriptions to site (ı.e. web) that has a lot of information about the sıte (i.e. minoan).
It makes a change to be living some where that has real festivals!
Istanbul recently has the Rock'n'Coke festival (music and drink respectively I think not a massive coccaine plug!). This was just ouside Istanbul (hezarfen) which meant that I was able to stay at home and day trip in - thus avoiding the need to camp with 10,000 young turkish women in the sweaty heat ... I really must be getting old :)
The line up was mostly British - which seems to fit with modern Turkeys obsession with the country (EPL, cars i.e. landies, shops etc) - with a few locals and at least one New York / Ukrainian band (Gogol Bordello - one of the main reasons that I went).
Gogol Borello where just amazing - even better live than recorded and so much energy. Unfortunately - I did not think to take my camera when I was atching them .....
Also on Saturday were Kasabian - who were fun in a sort of cliched english rock and bad clothes sort of way but definately bouncable - and Muse who were extrememly cliched in a British art school sort of way and I am afraid I walked out on them. Grumpy old git ..
The main reason for going on Sunday for me was Sisters of Mercy - well Andy Eldritch, the drum machine, distinctly ropey guitarist and some guy who may have used to be in ZZ Top according to someone my grrlfriend spoke to once.
The vocals were variable - could be something to do with the fact that he cannot last a song without a fag - but he still has it occasionally. Also - some idiot put them on before dark - sisters don't do afternoon! - and they got a lot better when the sun went down. Immense fun alround.
There were also some prancers called Placebo - but they sounded dodgy and I was too busy on the other stage with an outfit called Hyper (DJ + Live) who does the most amazing version of Adam Ant - ant music even better than the original. I haven't moved the old bod in that way since I was considerable younger (I am not sure that young istanbuli have ever seen the beez before).
The pictures are from the Sisters set
I also experiemented with my camera recording video - this is the best one
and a few more ..
Dont know why I have tried this before
One day of the trip I went for canyoning expedition down Hells Canyon that feeds into the Dalaman river.
The trip was guided by Vedat from AlternatifOutdoor - this canyon is not reachable without support. Vedat does this himself about once a year but the last time he took this trip with a group was about 5 years ago and he does not think that anyone else comes this way.
The group was me, Vedat, Jack from New York, Jenni and Fred (?) and Aise from Istanbul. We set of by Landy to the top of the mountain and then hiked in down the old path that was used before the road (track!) was put into the villages. This path is not used any more - as we discovered when we got to the bottom where we needed to cross the only bridge to get into the canyon. The bridge was still there - just - but looked like a scene from Indiana Jones and since no one of us where heroes we abseiled in instead (more fun :). Most of the way down was rough scree - which was interesting as well.
From there - it was a scramble done the canyon floor around and over boulders and other rocks. More abseiling in places and some very adventurous leaps and jumps. As we got deeper - the canyon got more sheer - at points it must have been about 10 feet wide and 1000 feet deep with sheer walls. There must be some amazing climbing and abseiling on those walls.
We also started to encounter water - deep, cold, clear pools as we traversed the water hewn native rock. At some places the pools were 20 feet deep and 100 feet long and we had to swim for it - baking hot to ice cold to baking hot :).
Overall the canyon took about 8 hours of non stop scrambling and swimming with only brief stops for wonderfull packed rations provided by vedat (bread cheese tomatoes cucumber peaches and deep frozen peach juice). We emerged beaten and bruised for about 1 hour of hard rafting to get back to the base (and a lot of swimming).
Amazing!
A few pictures posted below - but my camera ran ouot of power at the begining so I am hoping to get some pictures from the others.
I spent a week with Gwyneth on the West Coast of Turkey at a place called Akyaka - also known as Gokova.
Akyaka is a very pleasant place between Marmaris and Bodrum on a very rocky coast and not much touristed. For me - the main reason for going there is it close to one of the main areas for rafting and canyoning in Turkey (seperate post for the canyoning).Gwyneth wanted to visit a few of the many ancient sites. This proved to be more difficult than expected (Turkey seems to have the same approach to ancient sites as Ireland!) - however we really struck pay dirt in the form of ancient Iasus - a whole peninsula of ruins with a amphitheatre and some really good mosaics. It was impressive to watch Gwyneth suck up a whole litre of fruit juice in one go after a day on the baking ruins.
Another find was the peninsula south of Marmaris - Selimiye and Bozburun. Must explorer that area more.
For the pictures - do the usual with the following
I have the keys to my new Apartment and should be moving in soon.
In case you wanted to know where it is - an easy to use picture (click for a bigger version) and below a link for anybody with Google Earth.
