Then I'll try something new..

People must really wonder about the level of sanity of South Africans. 

For once I did very little at planning every fine detail of this trip. In fact, I'm forcing myself to just take things as they come. Admittedly, this is not the easiest thing for me. And so the one thing that really concerned me, was the short time we had to transfer to our flight to Istanbul in Doha. I simply could not believe that the airport was that small. Well - the good news is that people in Doha just seem to be so organised, that we never even had to break out a sweat in order to get to our next flight.

I suspect the only thing that has some colour in Doha, would be the colour-coded boarding passes that assist you, or rather, allows airport staff to assist you to get to your connecting flight easily.  It felt as if all the buildings around the airport were either white, or sand colour. And between roads and runways, all you can see is sand. Not a single tree. No grass. Just sand. I'm not sure whether I could survive in such a place, and was very pleased to leave.

And so, finally, we arrived in Istanbul. Our tourguide met us at the airport, but not without some skepticism.  He simply couldn't understand how Niel could be venturing into the Turkey winter with a pair of shorts. He was not the only one expressing their grave concerns for Niel's dress code.

We always have brave plans of turning into super explorers on our first day abroad. When will we ever learn. And even though this time round, we were careful to not have overly optimistic plans, we still ended up not even doing those little plans we had. In stead, we spent the afternoon wondering around the area near our hotel, and ended up trying a plethora of Turkish cuisine. From a street cafe with owner how had to call someone to come and answer our question of "How do you say Thank You in your language", to a lovely bakery selling the most exquisite biscuits and cakes, to a lovely restaurant specialising in kebabs. The problem is - I have no hope of telling you what we actually ate. Well - I do know that, at the street cafe, we had the best ever roll with shwarma meet (beef). The bakery's biscuits were just stunning. And the lamb we ate at the kebab restaurant was stunning.  As for the Turkish Tea and Coffee - the jury is still out.....

We're in Turkey. Tomorrow we start the real tour. I cannot wait to start taking real photo's!