Carey and Susan's Excellent Adventures

I thought I would write about where we are staying in Istanbul and talk about some of the interesting things, well interesting to me, that we have noticed so far. We have rented a two bedroom apartment for a week. There are a number of reasons we went this route versus a hotel room. It is nice having a place where we can cook if we want to, store leftovers in the fridge, has a living room and eating area where we can relax and chill out. It costs a little less than renting two hotel rooms. Probably more importantly, it is in a residential neighborhood, so we get more of a feel for the people, you get a little bit of experience of living in Turkey rather than just being a tourist. For me, I get a rush out of being in a place where I don’t speak the language and have to try and get by and function by piecing together things through using a phrase book, the few local words you know, or a combination of that and sign language. Istanbul is a big city. The twenty-third largest city in t...

Our son, Parker, made it to Istanbul to meet us on vacation. He had quite a trip, for a variety of reasons. First of all, there was the passport issue. We live in Nashville, TN. Parker lives in Dawson Creek, BC. On Sunday night I was looking online and found that, although we can buy a visa at the airport when we arrive in Istanbul, you can purchase one online before you leave and print it off. I purchased visas for Susan and I and then called Parker. "Hey, give me your passport information and I can get your visa online and email it to you." "Sure, I'll take a picture and send it to you. Funny thing, you know my passport expires at the end of January, just in time I guess," said Parker. Me - silence - then, "You know I am pretty sure your passport needs to be valid for at least six months after the day you arrive in Turkey. A lot of countries are like that." An internet search confirmed this assumption. So, we had a little bit of an iss...

The overall time door to door from our apartment in Nashville to the hotel in Istanbul was about 26 hours, so over one full day. However, the trip was quite enjoyable for a couple of reasons, an eight hour layover in Amsterdam gave us a chance to stretch our legs, do some sight seeing and break up the trip. Also, Susan got to fly business class! Flying business class internationally is not an experience  that is regular for us. This trip we lucked out and we were able to get Susan’s flight booked with airline miles. I travel quite a bit on business and the Delta Airlines marketing department has me right where they want me, with most of my business flights through Delta airlines, Delta American Express credit card, partner programs with hotels and other incentives I have racked up quite a few miles. Between miles, bonus miles, medallion bonus miles, credit card miles, super bonus miles, super double secret bonus miles and who knows what else, we had enough miles for one of us to ...

Hi! Welcome to my first attempt at blogging.  My wife, Susan, and I are fifty somethings (still surprises me a little that we have reached that demographic) that love to travel and experience new things. In many ways, this blog is mostly for me so that I can try my hand at writing. I love telling stories and this seems to be a natural transition for me to actually write them down. Also, Susan accuses me of not remembering things - actually, more precisely, she accuses me of selective memory - so I thought this would be a way of recording our adventures and thoughts.