Kiara's Amazing Travels

tArriving in Turkey I donated my long sleeve, appropriate middle eastern attire to an orphanage and decided to wear less clothing!! Sounds bad but Turkey is much more contemporary and I was truly sick of wearing the 'camel top' as it became called because of all the lovely pictures of camels on it (its the ugly orange one in some of my photos lol). We started exploring this diverse country down south at Cappodocia which has to be the most enchanting place I've ever come across. The landscape is full of 'fairy chimneys' which are huge cone shaped rock formations that the locals have used as caves and homes. Some are still inhabited today! I won't go on for too long about it because we did so much in Turkey, but it really looks like something out of a fairytale so have a look at my pics which I should be putting up soon hopefully. We then went to Olympos which is on the coast and has the most beautiful water to swim in. This fact is ruined slightly because the beach consists of big rocks and pebbles – not the comfiest thing to lie on, but we made it work. We just chilled out here for a few days which was really nice and relaxing. I should mention that I was traveling with 3 other girls – Jana, Francesa and Anneke as well as our tour leaders Kevin and Hayley. It was a small group but despite that we had a lot of fun together and became a really close little family. So after Olympos came Aludinez which was a bit farther up the coast. We indulged in a boat cruise here which was awesome sailing between the different islands and jumping on and off the boat to cool down in the water. I talked Francesca into coming with me on a jet ski which was a good thrill especially because I almost threw her off a few times lol!!! Celcuk was next and we had a lot of fun partying at the hotel bar. I decided I'd had enough of seeing ruins so I talked a few people into spending the day with me at the water park!! Word of advice to ladies – don't wear a bikini to these places and go down the really fast slides!!! I also visited Troy and although there isn't much of the city left, you can imagine how it must have been in its day. Galipoli was an awesome experience as well. We spent some time going to see all the memorials from WW1 and the museum which interesting. Our last stop was Istanbul which is definitely one of my favourite cities. The atmosphere and vibe are so cool and it is just a really relaxed place. I absolutely loved the Aya Sophia which was a mosque, then a Catholic church and is now a museum. It is so interesting because you can see the Islamic and Christian influence together in the same place. Across from the Aya Sophia is the Blue Mosque which is just as stunning and impressive. Ok so I went through the itinerary very quickly just to give you a basic idea of what we did. Reading back over it, I should have written it in point form but I'm sure you'll get the idea. Turkey overall was my favourite country in the Middle East because the government is secular and I found that makes the whole culture more accepting and open minded. There is so much history and each place we visited was different and interesting. This is definitely a place I would like to visit again. Oh yeah and a couple of funny things that happened that definitely were not funny at the time!! Sitting around the camp fire one night having a pretty in depth conversation about world politics, I decided to do a little fire dance and scream to get rid of the HUGE, HAIRY spider that thought it was a good idea to climb up my leg!! Gross and, well just gross but it's funny now and I'm sure you'll all find it at least a bit amusing to imagine. Another stupid thing that happened was me falling down the truck stairs, with my huge bag on, and doing a really good job of spraining my ankle!! As if that wasn't enough, I later found out I had knocked my bag and my beloved laptop didn't want to work!! But everything in life is a test and I came out a little bit hurt but better for experiencing it. Hope you actually understood this blog as it's full of so many places and things we did. There were so many things we did but these are the highlights I wanted to share with you all. So now I need to write my Europe blog............ so many memories. Love you muchly xxoo ki