Jade Prints

Bring Home The World

Journey to the Land of Smiles

Sawasdee Ka!!!

As hard as it is to believe, we find ourselves once again preparing for summer vacation!! Tomorrow we are off to exotic Thailand and the excitement in the house can barely be contained. In fact, I’ve been packing for a week already because I just couldn’t wait….! I’ve also been listening to the audio samples on www.thai-language.com in an attempt to identify and replicate the tonal variations of the language (spoiler: no success!)

This will be the first time for all of us to set foot in the Land of Smiles, and we are sure it won’t disappoint. The first bit of excitement (geek warning!!) comes in the form of the Emirates A380 aircraft that we get to fly in from Dubai to Bangkok. Unfortunately we’ll be experiencing it from the lower deck (i.e. economy) but just to be in it will be awesome!! We fly overnight from Madrid to Dubai and then after a 2 hour layover continue on to Bangkok arriving in the early evening. Javi and Virginia are flying from Barcelona and the flight schedule has them about 7 hours ahead of us every step of the way – so hopefully they’ll have the perfect street stall picked out for dinner when we arrive!!!! 🙂

We will be 20 days on the ground and will visit Bangkok, Ayutthaya, Sukhothai, Chiang Mai, Koh Samui, Koh Tao, and finally end up back in Bangkok for a night. I’m definitely excited for everything but a few things stand out: our day at Elephant Nature Park (www.elephantnaturepark.com) where we will be able to see and help take care of rescued elephants (no rides or unnatural behaviour here), the historic city of Sukhothai looks amazing, and our planned island adventures all top my expectation list. Stay tuned!

ThailandMap-Route

And now to put the finishing touches on the luggage. As usual, our photography equipment will weigh more than our clothes (that beautiful tripod is a gym membership on its own!) So until Bangkok, stay cool! Speaking of which – we will be leaving behind 36ºC with 15% humidity in Madrid and saying sawasdee to 32ºC with 74% humidity!!! Between the humidity and the rainy season, every day will be bath day!! We keep saying that it can’t be any worse than China….time will tell!

Istanbul: The Final Hurrah (and baklava)

Our final day in Istanbul!  🙁

We hopped a taxi to Suleymaniye Mosque for our first stop this morning for the low low price of 12 TL. Although the largest mosque in the city, it was very bright and simple compared to the Blue Mosque but the exterior is certainly vast. [Read more…]

Majestic Istanbul

We treated ourselves to a looooong sleep and rolled into the breakfast room at 10 am! With only two more days in Istanbul, we are obviously not going to see close to everything so our objective is to prioritise and maximise those priorities. If that make any sense?!

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I ♥ Cappadocia

I had another relatively early morning as I couldn’t resist the lure of balloon burners! At 5:50 am the balloons were already making their way through Göreme. At first I just stood perched in my little chimney window but then simply had to roam around the hotel area – they were coming at us from all angles!

Cappadocia-Goreme-Balloons

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Bird’s Eye View of Cappadocia

We struggled out of bed at 4:30 after a very patchy sleep! I think my problem was a cross between the bed, my excitement, my two hour siesta, and my excitement (again!) Just as we were leaving, the 5 am call to prayer echoed through the town. We were dropped at the bottom of the hill at the Butterfly Balloons office where we filled up on fruit and breads/pastries as we waited for the signal to load our vans and head for the launch sites. There were five balloons ready to go up (I think – I was too excited to really pay attention! Or too tired!)

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Cappadocia: Paradise Found

We disembarked the Noordam at 7 am to meet our airport transfer provided by EFENDİ Travel. Let the Cappadocian adventure begin! The driver was a little late (10 min) but then he stayed with another family who were waiting for their driver for another 10 – 15 min wile we were in the van. It was a little bizarre but we hoped he knew his time limits to get us to the airport on time!

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High Seas: Day 11, Istanbul

We docked at Karaköy port in Istanbul just shortly after sunrise. Once again, our starboard balconies offered fabulous views over the bay to Topkapi Palace, Aya Sophia, the Blue Mosque, and more!

Today’s goal was to explore the new side of Istanbul and leave Sultanahmet for our return when we are staying in the heart of it. Our first stop was Galata Tower for an overview of the city.

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High Seas: Day 10, at sea

So here we are steaming towards Istanbul! We are expected to enter the Dardenelles strait around 4 pm so we are keeping ourselves occupied until then! So far my day has been:

  • 9 am: Breakfast of Eggs Benedict
  • 10 am: Cake decorating with marzipan
  • 10:30 am:  Magazine reading in the Library
  • 11 am:  Appetizer demo with Tzatziki, Baba Ganoush, and Hummus. Delish!
  • 12 noon:  sitting with my feet propped up in the Crow’s Nest writing to you fine folk!  🙂

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High Seas: Day 9, Mykonos

We had a whopping 15 hours in Mykonos so we had a bit of a lie in and met at 9 am. Well, I say lie in but really it consisted of me jumping out of bed every 5 minutes from about 6:45 am to check the changing light as the sun rose above the hills. [Read more…]

High Seas: Day 8, Ephesus

Today was the big day! Ephesus! Everything up until now has just been training for this day! I was extremely worried about the heat but it actually wasn’t too bad.  Rhodes is still my over-the-top heat day! We disembarked around 8:15 and sauntered into Kusadasi. Definitely one of the most accessible and easy ports! [Read more…]

High Seas: Day 6, at sea

We had a relatively relaxed day at sea. Our first activity was a tour of the ship’s kitchen at 10:30. It was basically a walk through but very interesting. There are 120 cooks and 30 support staff to create the 12000 daily meals! Now we know where it all comes from!

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High Seas: Day 5, Haifa and Sea of Galilee

We had lovely views from the balcony as we docked in Haifa. The Ba’hai Gardens are something else! We took a tour with Guided Tours Israel this day (GTI) that would bring us to Nazareth, Cana, the Church of the Beatitudes, Tabgha, Capernaum, and the Jordan River at Yardenit. Our group was quite strange – no one talked even amongst themselves and our guide lacked time management skills so it was a bit of an odd day. We’re glad we did it but it didn’t leave us overly enamoured with what we saw.

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High Seas: Day 4, Ashdod (Jerusalem)

We ordered our breakfast in our cabin to facilitate the early meeting time of 7:50 with our taxi mates. Our group was Debora and Neil from California,  Fran and Ian from Montreal, Gunila and Ecran from Denmark, and ourselves. The disembarking process was fairly straight forward but with additional passport checks and security. Soon we were entering the taxi fray! Actually it wasn’t that bad.

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High Seas: Day 3, at sea

Today was a navigation day as we made our way to Israel. Our first duty of the day was to pass through Israeli immigration. We basically just had to pick up our passports that were handed in at check in and the have a quick face to face with an immigration inspector.  Afterwards we had arranged to meet up with some people who were also hoping to take a taxi into Jerusalem the next day (Javi and Virginia were taking a tour to include the dead sea so Carlos and I were on our own). We had connected through the cruise critic forum and facebook and in the end we were a group of 8 with our fingers firmly crossed that everything would work out with the minimum of chaos!

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High Seas: Day 2, Rhodes

We woke up to the nearing coastline of Rhodes. Luckily our starboard balconies provided the perfect vantage point since there were perfect views of the old town and port area. Beautiful!

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High Seas: Day 1, Depart from Athens

With Wednesday being a holiday (The Assumption), we had no trouble getting to the port at Piraeus in good time. The four of us – and more importantly all of our luggage – miraculously fit in one taxi. The fare was 20 euros and we were dropped right in the middle of the chaos!! People everywhere!! And luggage!!

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Hilly Finale in Athens

In complete contrast to the day before, this morning had us making our way up the hill to the Acropolis at 7:30 am! We went to the entrance on the Plaka side and arrived with about ten minutes to spare before the opening time of 8 am.  This is when we learned that water cost 3 euros up there. There are fountains inside though so luckily we didn’t waste that money!

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Food Coma in Athens

ugh. It was seriously a struggle to do anything productive the day after our feast with Eleni and Vagelis! And I swear it was all over eating – not over drinking! We actually had very little to drink (when you consider what we are capable of if we put our minds to it!!!)

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Athens: Olympic Proportions

Wow. So our first “full” day in Athens was eventful to say the least! We had a leisurely morning with breakfast on the roof of the hotel overlooking Mitropoli and the Acropolis (of course!) For 5 euros the breakfast was amazing – yogurt with honey, a toastie, a bun with butter and cherry jam, coffee or tea, and juice. Even at 9 am we had to move into the shade from the heat!

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