A Series Of Unfortunate Events
As we’ve been traveling and writing, I’ve made an effort to include stories from our past lives when they intersected in some way with our current situation. Like finding a model of a pyramid in…
DTour To AgriCulture
Chicago’s most obvious benefits are Chicago-centric: museums, galleries, restaurants, neighborhoods… The less obvious benefits are regional. Chicago is hard by a ton of really interesting places and beautiful sights. The Indiana Dunes are an hour…
And What Have We Learned?
My dear friend Whip challenged me with a writing prompt. “You’re world travelers now. How have your travels changed your perspective? What are the top five things you’ve learned about yourself or the world on…
The Old City, And How It Got Its Name
The Old City is home to many of Istanbul’s greatest hits: Topkapi Palace, the Hagia Sophia, The Blue Mosque, and the Grand Bazaar. The problem is that every one of these locations is on the…
Welcome Back, Codger
One of the things that has been a little grinding about this lifestyle is that we never know how things work. We’re like perpetual toddlers, landing in a new city and having to figure out…
Kapadokya: Land Of Fairies
Or, as it’s Anglicized and better known, Cappadocia. Ground Zero for Instagrammable hot air balloons. If you know us you’ll be unsurprised that we didn’t go aloft. What may surprise you, and certainly surprised us,…
Strapping On The Bible Belt
Turkey has some serious Christian history. Constantine, who converted the Roman Empire to Christianity in 312, established Constantinople as the Roman capital in 330. That attracted a lot of Christians to Turkey, but there was…
Ethnosports
It’s weird to have a multicultural experience and not know which culture you’re experiencing. But that was Istanbul’s Ethnosports competition. I’ve since homeworked my way to a general idea of the origins of each of the…
Hammam: It Ain’t Nuthin’ But A Turkish Bath
I hope you all appreciate the breadth of research I’m willing to engage in to provide you with only the most timely, most topical, most accurate reporting. This is the third installment in my hopefully…
… Not Constantinople
We keep going on about how the places we’ve been visiting are so old. “Ooh, Guanajuato dates to the 1500s!” “Holy shit, Marrakech was founded in 1070.” “Wait a minute, the Phoenicians lost Carthage in…