Travel Diaries: Cappadocia, Turkey

In part 2 of my "Travel Diaries", I will be chronicling our time in Cappadocia. After spending two nights in Istanbul, we took a domestic flight to Cappadocia, where we stayed for one night, and two days. The city of Cappadocia is known for it's picturesque scenery. Most of the city is built into caves, (including many of the hotels). Although we did not stay in one of those, our hotel was still designed in such a way to give off a "cave vibe." We did, however, have a gorgeous view of the caves from the hotel dining hall terrace.

 

We had tour guides booked for both days of our trip. The one we had on day one was amazing. He was funny, friendly and taught us so much about Cappadocia's history. There was another family with us on our journey as well, who had come from Sydney, Australia. We exchanged contacts so we could keep in touch through e-mail and social media.

 

Cappadocia is world famous for their hot air balloon rides. They launch very early in the mornings, so you could watch the sunrise from up above. We were planning to check them out on day two, but unfortunately they got cancelled, due to extreme wind. The tour guide we had on day two was a bit rough around the edges! Other than that, we enjoyed seeing more of Cappadocia's beauty. Our day ended with a one hour hike through the valleys. I cannot even put into words how beautiful it was. It was unreal, and looked like a painting had come to life. Finally, we said goodbye to Cappadocia and took the last flight back to Istanbul. We stayed in Turkey for another 5 days, before embarking on our journey to Madinah, Saudi Arabia. (Stay tuned for Part 3 of my "Travel Diaries", where I will tell you about Madinah).



Hotel Dining Hall, where we often saw cats hanging out!

                                    

Dining Hall overlooking Hotel Swimming Pool

 

Hotel pool during the day



Hotel Courtyard #1



Hotel Courtyard #2



Turkish culture is known for their teas. Here is one of the first apple teas I was served in Cappadocia. Yummy!

 

Stray dogs overlooking the city

Hike #1

Hike #2

Hike #3

Panoramic view from our hike

                                    

Cave restaurant where we had our last meal


 

Travel Diaries: Istanbul, Turkey

A few months ago I took a beautiful trip with my parents to Istanbul, Cappadocia, Makkah and Madinah. Our very first stop was Istanbul, where we stayed for about a week. One of the first sounds I heard there, was the sound of the adhan (call for prayer), right from our hotel room. It was one of my favourite things about our trip. How I miss it! We heard it five times a day, right before every prayer. Istanbul is known as the "city of mosques." There are mosques everywhere! There was even a very small and modest one right across the street from our hotel. Another nickname for Istanbul is the "city of cats!" It is overrun by stray cats! There is even a famous kitty that lives inside of the Hagia Sophia museum, who has his own instagram account. =) I spoke with locals asking them who takes care of all these strays (FYI.. there are also stray dogs.). Our tour guide told me that locals and tourists are responsible for them. If you look closely, you can even see that some of the dogs have tags on their ears. These tags indicate that the dogs have been vaccinated, vet checked, and released back onto the streets. (Similar to the North American Trap, Spay/Neuter, and Release program). In my experience, I never once saw anyone be mean to any of these animals. They live peacefully amongst the humans and nobody seems bothered by them. It was really heartwarming to see how kind everyone was to these animals. Amongst the stray animals and mosques, we also saw most of the main tourist spots of Istanbul; The Hagia Sophia, the famous Blue Mosque, the Grand Bazaar, Topkapi Palace and such. The weather was a bit cold, so we had to take our winter clothes with us. Besides the cold, it was a lovely trip Allahumdulillah. We came back with various souvenirs of course, including Turkish Delight! Which as it turns out, is actually from Turkey, not Narnia! ;)

Blue Mosque

 

Inside Blue Mosque

Inside Hagia Sophia, featuring cat! =)

CATS! =)

Continental Breakfast at Our Hotel

Pierre Loti Look Out Point

 

Turkish Delight! My favourite!





Vacationing, Cats & Ramadan

Ramadan is soon coming to an end. There is about one week left of fasting, before Eid. Overall, Allahumdulillah fasting was pretty good. The first couple of days were tough, then my body slowly got used to it. Most of our schedules change drastically while we are fasting. Since we eat breakfast (sehri) before Fajr prayers, which (this year) was at around 3-3:30 am. And don't get to bed till about 12 or even 1 am, after we are finished reading Isha and Taraweeh prayers. It requires a lot of sacrifice. Sacrifice of sleep and food, but Inshallah it will pay off in the end. My Ramadans are usually relatively quiet. I don't go out much. The week prior to Ramadan was rather hectic. So here's what I had been up to:

My husband and I took a weekend vacation up North to Wiarton, Manitoulin Island and Tobermory. We crammed in a whole bunch of fun activities in three days and managed to do almost every touristy activity each city had to offer. So here's a rough little diary of how we spent our trip:

Day 1 (Friday): Drove out of the city late afternoon. Grabbed dinner on the way to Tobermory. Originally, we were going to spend all three days in Tobermory. Instead, we lodged at Wiarton for the night.

Day 2 (Saturday): The motel/lodge we stayed at provided continental breakfast (muffins, cereal, coffee, tea, yogurt, buns, and such). We talked to the motel owner about what activities they had in Wiarton. He arranged for us to get a chartered fishing boat early evening, so that gave us all morning and half of the afternoon to get some sight seeing in. We spent our morning/afternoon at the local park, local beach, downtown and did some hiking. Afterwards, we headed back to the dock, and hung out on the fishing boat for a about 3-4 hours. We didn't catch any fish, but the weather was amazing and we got to see a beautiful sunset on our way back to shore. After fishing, we went for dinner to a local restaurant, that served the best bruschetta I've ever tasted. That was the end of day 2.

Day 3 (Sunday): We planned to go to Tobermory on Sunday, but decided to take a two hour ferry ride (from Tobermory) down to Manitoulin Island instead. Manitoulin Island is the largest lake island in the world! It was truly a sight to see. The towns were so far apart, and there weren't any people, stores, restaurants or even gas stations for miles! It was all just lake after lake after lake. There is only one traffic light on the entire island, which we never even ran into! It was really refreshing and so different from the city. The lakes and beaches were so shallow, and the water was so blue. One of my favourite things we did was visit Bridal Veil Falls. It's a cute little waterfall with a pool of water under it that you can swim in, and walk around behind the waterfall. It was amazing. The island sleeps early, everything closed at about 6-6:30. We managed to find a restaurant open late just in time for dinner! Mind you, "open late" in Toronto means about 1 am, in Manitoulin Island, it means 8:30 pm! After dinner, we headed down to a lakeside cottage for the night.

Day 4 (Monday): We planned to rent a paddle boat in the morning (from the cottage) but the day started off quite cold and windy, so that was a bust. We drove around the island a bit more in the morning before heading back to the ferry, back to Tobermory. As soon as we got off the ferry, we got on a glass bottom boat tour that takes you around to the Tobermory shipwrecks (that is something Tobermory is known for. People do a lot of scuba diving there.) The boat tour was about an hour long. And that was the end of our trip! We took the scenic route back home, driving through Blue Mountain and Wasaga Beach.

These were the highlights of our trip. In between all these activities, we saw lots of beaches and look out points. It was a lot of driving from place to place. Loads of fun, it was a wonderful trip.

We came home to find out that our cat (Pepper) needed immediate medical attention. He accumulated a urinary infection as a result of 1. Eating cheap cat food (Whiskas dry food, Purina Cat Chow and Friskies canned wet food, for anyone who has pets) and 2. Not drinking enough water. We took him to the vet and they treated him right away. Poor kitty went through a lot while at the vet and was hospitalized for three days. Once he finally came home, I had to medicate him for about a week and half to help dissolve his urinary crystals. He is now on a special prescription diet and is back to his usual crazy antics Allahumdulillah! He's healed well, and it's great to see him back to normal! Running about, opening cabinets, meowing up a storm, and what not! Because of this scare, we've also changed Tiger's diet, to a better, more expensive and grain-free food. It was a bit nerve wracking at first, but the vet(s) at the clinic informed us that urinary infections are quite common in cats and especially more so in male cats, so that was rather comforting. I would like to give a shout out to my AMAZING vet(s) for helping Pepper through this crazy ordeal!

So there you have it. My miscellaneous updates for the day. =)