Instead of fitting into simplified geographical labels, there’s a strong sense of being part of a culture formed in the crossroads of Europe and Asia, shaped by both the legacy of the Ottoman Empire and the reforms of the modern Turkish republic. Many people see themselves as belonging to a distinct Turkish identity.

Hagia Sophia’s Thousand-Year Transformation

Our first stop was the magnificent Hagia Sophia, a structure that embodies Istanbul’s identity more than any other building. Originally constructed by Byzantine Emperor Justinian I between 532 and 537 CE, this architectural marvel has undergone many transformations.

The building’s history reads like a political timeline of empires. For nearly a millennium, it served as the principal cathedral of Eastern Christianity until 1453, when Sultan Mehmed II converted it into a mosque following the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople. The Ottomans didn’t destroy the Christian elements but rather incorporated them into their Islamic architecture, adding minarets, a mihrab, and a minbar while preserving many of the original Byzantine mosaics. Even today it remains the centre of politics, having witnessed protesters unfurling a “Free Palestine” sign, before quickly removing it, presumably for a social media campaign. Other sensitive topics like the Armenian genocide and the population exchange with Greece reflect ongoing struggles with historical memory and national identity. Our guide tended to avoid these questions, due to their political sensitivity.

The transformation continued into the modern era when Mustafa Kemal Atatürk converted it into a museum in 1934, symbolizing Turkey’s secular reforms. For 86 years, it existed as a unique blend of Christian and Islamic heritage until July 2020, when it was reconverted to a mosque. This most recent change sparked international debate, but it ensures that this architectural wonder continues to serve as a living, breathing place of worship rather than merely a historical artifact.

What captures visitors’ attention immediately are the massive circular calligraphic roundels – some of the largest in the Islamic world. These wooden panels, inscribed by the Ottoman calligrapher Kazasker Mustafa İzzet Efendi, display the names of Allah, Prophet Muhammad, the first four caliphs (Abu Bakr, Umar, Uthman, and Ali), and Muhammad’s grandsons Hassan and Hussein.

The Christian mosaics that survive today offer glimpses into Byzantine artistry. During the Ottoman period, many were plastered over but not destroyed, allowing for their later restoration during the museum years.

The Blue Mosque: Six Minarets and an Architectural Controversy

Directly across from Hagia Sophia stands the Sultan Ahmed Mosque, better known as the Blue Mosque, completed in 1616 during the reign of Sultan Ahmed I. The mosque was designed by architect Sedefkar Mehmed Ağa as an imperial show of strength to complement the imposing Hagia Sophia. Its most distinctive feature – six minarets – caused considerable controversy when first built, as only the Prophet’s mosque in Mecca possessed the same number. Unlike Hagia Sophia’s converted structure, the Blue Mosque was purpose-built as a place of Islamic worship.

Minarets serve both functional and symbolic purposes. Their number indicates a mosque’s importance: most mosques have one minaret, significant mosques have two, and only the most important imperial mosques have four or more. Originally, muezzins climbed these towers five times daily to call the faithful to prayer, with the call projecting in all directions from the circular galleries.

The mosque earned its popular name from the more than 20,000 handmade İznik tiles that adorn its interior. These ceramic masterpieces feature intricate designs of tulips, roses, carnations, and lilies in predominantly blue hues, beautifully illuminated by 260 windows. The craftsmanship represents the pinnacle of Ottoman ceramic art, with each tile contributing to a harmonious whole that creates an almost meditative atmosphere.

During our visit, we observed the quiet distribution of Qurans to interested visitors, reflecting the mosque’s role as both a place of worship and cultural exchange.

The Basilica Cistern’s Mysterious Depths

Built in the 6th century during Emperor Justinian I’s reign, this underground marvel was designed to supply water to the Great Palace of Constantinople and Hagia Sophia. The engineering achievement is staggering: 336 marble columns, each approximately 9 meters tall, arranged in 12 rows of 28 columns, supporting the weight of the vaulted ceiling above.

The cistern’s most intriguing features are the Medusa heads serving as column bases. These carved blocks were discovered during restoration work between 1985 and 1987, having remained hidden for centuries.

Several explanations exist for these mysterious sculptures. Some historians believe the heads were intentionally placed upside down to neutralize Medusa’s legendary power to turn viewers to stone. Others suggest they were simply repurposed architectural elements from earlier Roman buildings, positioned for purely structural reasons. A third theory proposes they were placed as protective talismans against evil spirits.

The cistern’s Islamic history reveals an interesting cultural perspective on flowing versus still water. When the Ottomans conquered Constantinople, they largely abandoned the cistern because Islamic tradition considers moving water more spiritually pure than stored water. This cultural preference led to the cistern’s gradual neglect until its rediscovery and restoration in the modern era.

The atmospheric lighting and the sound of water dropping from the ceiling create an almost mystical environment that makes visitors feel like they’re exploring an underground cathedral. The wooden walkways allow close examination of the varied column capitals, some Corinthian, others Ionic or Doric, evidence that the builders sourced materials from diverse ancient structures throughout the empire.

Imperial Opulence: Inside Topkapi Palace

Topkapi Palace served as the primary residence of Ottoman sultans for nearly 400 years, and walking through its courtyards and chambers offers an intimate glimpse into imperial life. The palace complex is vast, containing multiple courtyards, residential quarters, administrative buildings, and the famous Harem, where the sultan’s family and concubines lived in seclusion.

The palace’s Sacred Relics chamber houses one of the world’s most significant collections of Islamic artifacts. These relics were brought to Istanbul in 1517 when Sultan Selim I conquered the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, establishing himself as Caliph. The collection includes items purportedly belonging to Prophet Muhammad himself: strands of hair from his beard, a tooth, his footprint, several swords, and most significantly, the Blessed Mantle (Hırka-i Saadet).

The chamber where these relics are displayed maintains a profound spiritual atmosphere, with an imam continuously reciting Quranic verses, a practice that has continued for centuries.

Whether one believes in the authenticity of these artifacts or not, their historical significance as symbols of Islamic leadership and spiritual authority is undeniable. The scholarly consensus confirms that Prophet Muhammad was indeed a historical figure who lived in western Arabia during the early 7th century CE, supported by contemporary Byzantine, Syrian, and Armenian sources.

The palace also contains remarkable examples of Ottoman craftsmanship and design. The tile work throughout the complex rivals that of Portugal’s Sintra Palace but with distinctly Turkish colour palettes and motifs[highlighted in visitor notes]. The various reception halls, and the sultan’s private chambers each tell stories of ceremony, diplomacy, and daily life in the Ottoman court.

The Harem quarters, often misunderstood as merely the sultan’s private domain, actually functioned as a complex social institution housing the royal family, their servants, and administrators. The intricate tile work, painted ceilings, and carefully designed spaces reveal the sophisticated court culture that governed the Ottoman Empire at its zenith.

A Culinary Disappointment: Fine Dining Falls Short

Our evening took us to a restaurant featured in the Michelin Guide, not a starred establishment, but one included in their recommendations. The experience proved disappointing. The meal began promisingly with traditional Turkish tea, and fresh bread. However, the execution fell short. While I generally like this cuisine, I didn’t enjoy their execution of it.

We began with a mezze platter featuring chickpea yogurt, spicy tomato spreads, stuffed grape leaves, feta cheese, and hummus. It looked good, but Each dish supposedly carried historical Ottoman connections, but the preparation lacked finesse.

All red meat was cooked well-done, reflecting traditional Turkish preferences that prioritize food safety over texture. While this cooking style has deep cultural roots, this part I had trouble getting used to.

I did enjoy the restaurant’s attempt to connect each dish to Ottoman history. The finale of apple tea was genuinely excellent. Even with the historical ambiance and cultural storytelling, the experience has room for improvement by international standards.

Farewell Moments: The Human Connection

Our most meaningful experiences came not from monuments but from human connections. Saying goodbye to our tour group at a local bar revealed the true value of shared travel experiences. The group had developed strong bonds, inside jokes, and genuine friendships over just a few days. While our tour guide occasionally seemed overwhelmed by the group’s energy and humour, his professionalism and knowledge enhanced our understanding of each site significantly.

I checked in together with one of our tour group members who happen to have the same flight connection as me, but in the process, the attendant mistakenly checked one of her suitcases under my itinerary, and I noticed it too late, causing us to spend time to work with the airline to return her luggage, a process that, thankfully, worked out a day later. I also met an Indian passenger on her first flight ever – traveling from India to Turkey to Frankfurt to Canada.

These moments reminded us that while Istanbul’s historic sites provide the framework for exploration, the people we meet, fellow travelers, guides, and locals enriches sightseeing into genuine cultural exchange. The laughter, shared observations, and collective wonder at ancient achievements created memories that we will carry with us.

Practical Observations: Modern Istanbul’s Challenges

The economic challenges facing Turkey were evident in pricing that approaches American levels despite significantly lower local wages. Inflation rates exceeding 47% in late 2024 have created substantial pressure on both residents and visitors. Unlike some nations, Turkey didn’t engage in excessive pandemic spending; however, several distinct factors have fueled inflation, such as persistent currency devaluation, lowering interest rates in the face of rising prices, and heavy reliance on imported goods (some even highly taxed). The political situation continues to generate debate, with critics arguing that democratic institutions have been weakened while supporters maintain that stability has been preserved.

The taxi situation in Istanbul remains problematic for tourists, with widespread reports of scams including overcharging, longer routes, and “broken” meters. The prevalence of these issues suggests systemic problems that detract from the city’s tourism appeal. Using public transportation or pre-arranged transfers appears advisable for visitors.

Istanbul’s airport stands out for its striking design and enormous scale (albeit with less than sufficient air conditioning), and amenities like business lounges with a mini golf course and a pool table give arriving travellers a strong first impression. However, this impressive gateway doesn’t fully hide the economic and social challenges that many people in Turkey face beyond its sleek halls.

See more of Istanbul here

The Stork Highway of Ancient Rome

Walking through Selçuk’s streets during the ongoing heat wave, we couldn’t help but notice the most unusual sight: massive white storks perched confidently atop Roman aqueduct ruins and modern utility poles alike. These aren’t just random visitors – they’re part of an annual migration pattern that has turned this historic town into Turkey’s unofficial stork capital.

Every March, storks return to Selçuk from their winter homes in sub-Saharan Africa. The storks choose the highest points available for their nests, including the remnants of Byzantine aqueducts that once supplied water to ancient Ephesus. Local authorities have even installed special platforms on utility poles to prevent the birds from electrocution while preserving their traditional nesting sites.

Mysteries of the Multi-Breasted Goddess

Our visit to the Ephesus Museum revealed one of archaeology’s most debated artifacts: a towering statue covered in what appears to be dozens of breasts. This is the famous Artemis of Ephesus, but those protuberances might not be what they seem.

The 292-centimetre-tall statue actually represents a fascinating scholarly controversy. While traditionally interpreted as multiple breasts symbolizing fertility, many experts now believe these oval objects are bull testicles, hung as offerings during sacrificial ceremonies. Some scholars even suggest they could be bee larvae, as bees were sacred to Artemis. What makes this debate particularly intriguing is that none of the “breasts” have nipples – a detail that ancient sculptors, masters of human anatomy, would hardly have overlooked.

This statue likely stood in the Temple of Artemis, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, making it a tangible connection to one of antiquity’s most celebrated structures. The temple’s destruction by 401 CE means this museum piece represents our closest link to understanding how the ancient world venerated this powerful goddess.

Where Emperors Built Upon Apostles

The ruins of the Basilica of Saint John dominate Ayasoluk Hill, their weathered stones telling a story of imperial ambition, religious devotion, and inevitable decay. Emperor Justinian I commissioned this massive structure between 548 and 565 CE, designing it as both a pilgrimage destination and a worthy monument to house the tomb of John the Apostle.

The basilica measured 428 by 213 feet, making it potentially the seventh-largest church in the world if reconstructed today. Justinian modeled it after the Church of the Holy Apostles in Constantinople, creating a cruciform structure crowned with six domes. The builders incorporated materials from the nearby Temple of Artemis and other Ephesian ruins, recycling ancient marble and stones into Christian architecture.

The basilica’s decline began with Arab raids in the 7th and 8th centuries, which forced the construction of defensive walls around the structure. By 1304, invading Seljuk Turks converted part of the building into a mosque, and in 1402, Tamerlane’s Mongol army destroyed it during their invasion. Earthquakes in the 1360s completed the devastation, leaving the impressive ruins we see today.

A Castle Built on Sacred Ground

Crowning Ayasoluk Hill above the basilica ruins stands a fortress that represents the practical realities of medieval defense. The Ayasoluk Castle, built during the Byzantine era around the 6th century CE, incorporates stones from dismantled Roman buildings, including materials from Ephesian structures.

The castle’s strategic position made it valuable to successive rulers. Seljuk Turks expanded it after conquering the area in 1090, and Ottoman forces later added their own modifications. The fortress enclosed fifteen towers connected by 1.5 kilometres of walls, protecting a small community that included a mosque, cisterns, baths, and residential quarters.

What makes this castle particularly fascinating is its relationship with the basilica below. Rather than destroying the Christian site, medieval builders incorporated it into their defensive strategy, using the basilica’s walls as part of the lower fortress complex. This created unique architecture where Islamic military architecture literally rests upon Christian sacred space.

Divine Intervention at the Neighbourhood Mosque

Our exploration of Selçuk’s religious landscape led us to the İsa Bey Mosque, a remarkable example of 14th-century Anatolian architecture. Built between 1374-75 by Syrian architect Ali ibn el-Dimişki, this mosque demonstrates the transitional period between Seljuk and Ottoman architectural styles.

The mosque’s segregated prayer areas for women represent traditional Islamic practice, though such arrangements can appear restrictive to visitors from different cultural backgrounds. These architectural divisions reflect religious interpretations that prioritize modesty and separate worship spaces, practices that have shaped Islamic religious architecture for centuries.

During our visit, we discovered that the mosque offers free Quran copies to interested visitors – a practice that connects contemporary Islamic outreach with the site’s long history as a religious centre. While there, we met a local man who was especially eager to talk to us about Islam. He explained that he hadn’t actually planned to visit the mosque at that time; he was on his way to complete some errands, but on a whim decided to stop by and pick up a Quran for a friend. Instead, he ran into us and was convinced that our meeting was no coincidence, telling us he believed it was divine intervention.

Our conversation quickly turned philosophical. He earnestly shared his belief that the Quran contains the answers to every question in life, presenting it as the ultimate guide to truth. At one point, he shared a rather striking perspective: he said that people who believe in God are the highest tier of lifeforms, followed by animals, with people who don’t believe, especially those who “act like they are their own god”, ranking below animals. I couldn’t help but laugh internally, realizing that by his definition I must be beneath the neighborhood cats lounging in the sun! He meant no offense, his words were offered with sincerity and a desire to share his worldview. Still, I got the impression he didn’t realize we weren’t religious ourselves, or how his ranking might sound to an outsider.

Echoes of the Population Exchange

Our journey to Şirince village, perched on a hillside 8 kilometres from Selçuk, revealed one of Turkey’s most poignant historical legacies. This mountaintop settlement, originally called Çirkince (meaning “ugly” in Turkish), was supposedly named by its Greek founders to deter other settlers from discovering their mountain paradise.

The village prospered under its Greek Orthodox Christian population, who spoke primarily Turkish despite their religious identity. By 1908-09, over 1,000 houses sheltered Greek families who cultivated vines, tobacco, figs, and olives while maintaining their distinct cultural traditions.

The 1923 Population Exchange between Greece and Turkey devastated Şirince’s established community. This compulsory transfer, formalized in the Convention Concerning the Exchange of Greek and Turkish Populations, displaced approximately 1.6 million people based solely on religious affiliation. Greek Orthodox Christians from Turkish territories moved to Greece, while Muslims from Greece relocated to Turkey. The abandoned houses we encountered represent this traumatic displacement.

The Grandeur and Complexity of Ancient Ephesus

The archaeological site of Ephesus, directly connected to modern Selçuk, represents one of the Mediterranean’s most significant Roman cities. As we walked among its ruins during the intensifying heat wave, the scale and sophistication of this ancient metropolis became immediately apparent. A local restaurant owner’s joke about Efes beer – suggesting we walk a few kilometres toward ancient Ephesus since “Efes” is simply the Turkish name for the ancient city – highlighted how thoroughly this archaeological site integrates with the culture. The beer’s naming represents a modern commercial connection to ancient prestige.

The Temple of Artemis ruins, reduced now to a single reconstructed column, still commanded respect as the remains of one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. Though little survives of this massive structure, which once measured 137 metres long and featured 127 columns each standing 18 metres high, the site’s significance resonates across millennia.

Ephesus declined through a combination of geographical and political factors. The Küçük Menderes River gradually silted up the harbour, cutting the city’s vital connection to maritime trade routes. Natural disasters, including a devastating earthquake in 614 CE, damaged infrastructure repeatedly. The rise of Christianity displaced traditional pagan worship, while Gothic invasions in 262 CE destroyed much of the city, including the Temple of Artemis.

I was captivated by how Ephesus’s grandeur was engineered. The ancients combined brute force and technical innovation. Iron pins and lead clamps held massive marble slabs together, damping seismic shocks and locking the city’s great structures in place (though unlikely they knew how well that method would stand up to an actual earthquake).

Workers used wooden cranes, pulleys, and earth ramps to raise monolithic columns, guiding tonnes of stone into precise positions.

We realized that knowing Latin wouldn’t have helped us decipher most Ephesian inscriptions. The city’s later inscriptions switched entirely to Greek, the region’s lingua franca after Alexander the Great’s conquest. An odd feeling – usually we lament not knowing Latin, but this time, it wouldn’t have helped at all. Amid these weighty ruins, we saw samples of the ichthys fish symbol (colloquially known as the Jesus fish symbol), scratched into ancient stones, symbolizing early Christianity. In Greek, it’s written as ΙΧΘΥΣ, and is sometimes seen abbreviated using a symbol resembling a pizza cut into eight slices.

The Temple That Bridged Empires

Among Ephesus’s countless architectural treasures, the Temple of Hadrian stands as a masterpiece of cultural synthesis. This elegantly proportioned structure, built around 117 CE, demonstrates how Roman architects embraced and transformed Eastern design traditions through its distinctive Syrian arch.

The temple’s facade tells multiple stories through stone. Tyche, goddess of city fortune, crowns the keystone wearing walls as her crown, symbolizing her protection over Ephesian prosperity. Above the inner doorway, a relief of Medusa emerges from acanthus leaves, not the terrifying monster of myth, but a protective figure surrounded by the Mediterranean vegetation that inspired Corinthian column designs.

Roman Domestic Life Preserved in Paint

The Terrace Houses of Ephesus shattered our expectations of ancient Roman domestic architecture. These luxury residences, inhabited by wealthy families from the 1st to 7th centuries CE, revealed that Roman homes were far more colourful and sophisticated than typical stone ruins suggest.

The houses featured extensive frescoed walls with floral motifs, geometric patterns, and figurative scenes painted directly onto plaster surfaces. Archaeologists have carefully restored many of these paintings, revealing the artistic sophistication of domestic Roman decoration. The mosaic floors display intricate geometric and figural designs, demonstrating the high level of craftsmanship available to Ephesian elite. These restorations represent authentic ancient artwork, not modern interpretations.

The houses incorporated sophisticated engineering, including hypocaust heating systems that circulated warm air beneath floors and within walls, and plumbing that provided both hot and cold running water. These amenities matched those available in Roman public baths, demonstrating the luxury standards of Ephesian wealthy families.

The Library That Conquered Death

The Library of Celsus stands as Ephesus’s most iconic structure, and deservedly so. This magnificent building, constructed between 110-135 CE, served the dual purpose of housing scrolls and honouring the dead. Tiberius Julius Aquila commissioned the library as a memorial to his father, Tiberius Julius Celsus Polemaeanus, who had served as Roman consul and proconsul of Asia. The building functioned as both a repository of knowledge, holding approximately 12,000 scrolls, and as Celsus’s mausoleum – his marble sarcophagus rests in a crypt beneath the building.

Fire destroyed the library’s interior around 262 CE, though the façade survived until earthquakes brought it down in the 10th or 11th century. Austrian archaeologists reconstructed the façade between 1970 and 1978, creating the impressive sight that draws crowds today for both daytime visits and evening light shows.

As we left, we saw people lined up for hundreds of meters lining up to see the evening light show – many of them coming in from cruise ships.

See more images from Selçuk and Ancient Ephesus

At the time we went, Iceland was one of the few countries in the world that allowed vaccinated foreign visitors. All that was needed was proof of vaccination – not even a pre-entry COVID test. The fact that most people were vaccinated meant that most people were not wearing masks in the city, but this was before even the Delta variant – it seems like so long ago now.

I had been itching to go travel somewhere since the pandemic began, and this was a very welcome nudge towards normalcy. Flying with Icelandair was the same as before: the seat and leg room is pretty comfortable, but there’s no food included with the airfare. The only difference is the extra bureacracy related to COVID, which increased how long it took each person to get through immigration, resulting in long lines after the plane. It didn’t help that we arrived so early in the morning that the food places weren’t even open yet and we had to wait in line while hungry. Eventually, we picked up the rental car and drove into Reykjavik for breakfast. We took the day easy by just exploring Reykjavik on foot, and took a nap in the afternoon when the jet lag caught up to us.

That night, we had probably the most memorable meal we’ve ever had at Tapas Barinn. The great thing about tapas is that as tourists, we get to try a little bit of everything as opposed to ordering entrées.

I even got to try some Flóki single malt whiskey. The smokiness from the whiskey actually comes from the barley smoked using sheep dung, a traditional cooking method. I also got to try some more brennivin like my last trip to Iceland – it’s essentially a grain alcohol (40%) and flavoured with caraway seeds, which gives it a sweeter flavour than something like vodka.

I had visited Iceland a couple years ago, but it was in the winter where there was only 4 hours of light per day, and even then the sky looked like dusk.

This time, travelling there in the summer, I didn’t see the night sky the entire time I was there. I could more clearly see and appreciate the nature around me, like the endless fields of moss growing on the rocks, and sheep freely roaming the fields.

It is thought that the Icelandic sheep were introduced to Iceland by the Viking settlers. Farmers allow them to freely roam around in the summer months, and as winter comes, they round them all back up again.

Like my previous trip to Iceland, we travelled along the Ring Road to see the waterfalls, and the volcanic beaches.

This is what the view at Seljalandsfoss looks like in the summer versus the view I saw in the winter. I had no idea Iceland could be so green. In the summer, people can even walk behind the waterfall, between the rock and the falls itself, but in the winter, the trail is closed because of ice.

Skógafoss looks about the same between summer and winter, except the vegetation is greener in summer.

A kitty even came out to hang out with us! As we were walking, the cat just walked up to us and stopped, expecting pets as a payment to pass through. After that, off it went.

Unlike travelling to Iceland in the winter, there were no restrictions (4WD) to drive up to Dyrhólaey in the summer. As we drove up, I could see why. The road was a set of steep switchbacks on gravel roads that were only a little more than two cars width – and there were no guardrails.

From the top, one can see the endless mountains, or watch the waves crash against the beaches of volanic sand.

The next day, we took a Superjeep tour to see ice caves on an active volcano known as Katla. The reason why it’s called Superjeep is because it can deflate its tires (for icy roads), and inflate them back up again depending on the terrain, but otherwise it looks like your typical Ford Excursion but with big tires.

The ice caves were located a ways in from the glacier. In summer, a lot of the ice had melted, revealing the volanic sand and rock underneath.

Only just now as I was writing this, did I realize we were travelling on a literal volcano, but I suppose it’s safe.

As we headed up the volcano, the lush, green vegetation quickly disappeared, revealing a rocky landscape with a mix of ice and black volcanic rock. Grey clouds covered the sky and it began to rain.

Eventually, the tour guide parked the truck, and we began our volcano hike. He brought his ice pick with him and used it several times to cut steps in the ice.

Despite the summer season, the temperature still felt like a mild winter. But it still meant the ice caves would not be as fully developed as in the winter season, and this could clearly be seen when comparing the ice caves from this trip versus the previous one. In fact, the winter ice cave was really more of a tunnel, while the picture of the summer ice cave was taken from the end of the cave with the camera pointing out.

The ice on top of the volcanic rock looked so alien that several movies used this place as a location for another planet. Rogue One was filmed in the area for the opening scene where young Jyn Erso hides from the stormtroopers. The movie doesn’t show the whole cave, but the similiarity is clear. If the movie had shown the whole cave, one would see why people call it the “Yoda Cave”.

It was nice staying in the cave for a bit as a brief respite from the rain. We made the mistake of wearing jeans for a multi-hour hike in the rain, and our wet clothes just made us even colder. We also got the chance to chat a bit with others on the tour. We met an orthodonist who practised in Greece by the name of Thanos (I wonder if he was aware of the MCU), and another who claimed to be a “voodoo priestess”, whatever that means.

The next morning, the plan was whale and puffin watching. It turned out to be an incredibly bad idea because I apparently get seasick, and didn’t get to see a lot. Even those who did see whales could really only see a small fin barely capturable on camera. Only a small percentage of people get to see the whale flying out of the water and crashing back down. Good thing the puffin watching was on a separate tour so I got to recover from the seasickness, but we decided not to go and instead gave the tickets away to another group that we overheard looking for tickets to the same tour.

Instead, we went to go get some Icelandic hotdogs for lunch. The key things that set it apart are the condiments, and the sausage. In addition to ketchup, and sweet mustard, they also add “remoulade”, similar to mayo with added herbs. The sausage uses lamb, as opposed to chicken/pork/beef.

Next, we headed to the Reykjanes Peninsula and the Blue Lagoon. We reached the tip of the peninsula and stood on the cliff watching the waves crash against the shore. If there was such a thing as the end of the earth, this was it. Despite strong gusts of wind, thousands of birds nested on the side of the cliff. From far away they look like white specks, but one can see them clearly with a good set of binoculars.

Next, we went for a relaxing soak at the Blue Lagoon, a man-made spa fed by water used by a nearby geothermal plant.

The water forms a milky blue colour from the high silica mud, and is supposedly good for the skin. They even sell super overpriced skincare products at the gift shop.

The area is beautiful with all the steam slowly rising from the hot springs with the light cool breeze. It would have felt like a whipping biting wind if not for the hot spring. You just submerge yourself until you feel not too hot and not too cold, and then relax with their cleansing silica face masks and a drink.

After leaving Blue Lagoon, we’d learned there was an active eruption happening at the nearby Fagradalsfjall volcano, and was happening slow enough such that it was OK to go see it.

A short walk from the parking lot led us to the lava flow. The trail continued upstream of the lava flow to the mouth of the volcano.

There were warnings for people to not walk too close to the lava flow because of risks of toxic fumes, but many did it anyway (as did we). Many curious hikers threw rocks on it just to find out that the lava flow had already hardened, even though there were still visible fumes coming out.

The hike turned out to be really long, and we weren’t really prepared to do a multi-hour hike at 20:00 in the cold, wind, and rain. As we reluctantly turned around, we saw people pointing the other and when we looked, we managed to catch a glimpse of the volcano spewing lava from afar. It makes sense now why people call it the “land of ice and fire”

It was surprising to see how watery the lava looked. I expected molten rock to be more viscous. The lava just spewed out in a splash. I felt super lucky to have seen such a sight.

As we walked back, I noticed these hexagonal patterns in the ground. Maybe this is how basalt columns form? From what I’ve read, under certain conditions, the cooling magma can cool in a way that forms these hexagonal shapes.

By the time we reached the parking lot, we were wet and cold (seemed to be a recurring theme by this point). Luckily there was a food truck at the parking lot selling hot soup.

The next morning before heading out to the Golden Circle, we started the day off with a nice brunch at Sandholt.

The unexpected star of the breakfast was the bread. As an amateur baker myself, this is the bread I aspire to make – it’s soft, light and airy with a crisp crust.

Next step along the Golden Circle was Geysir. The geothermal heat creates pressure underground causing the water to explode upward every few minutes. The entire area is filled with geothermal pools, some of which are so hot they’re bubbling from the heat and pressure.

It’s cool just to just stand in anticipation of the eruption. From looking at it, there’s no indication that it’s going to explode at all, and then it just does. At one point, the wind carried the water toward us and got us all wet, but luckily by the time the water hits the ground, it’s cooled down.

From the Geysir, we drove to Gullfoss. Unlike other waterfalls, this one has a unique feature where the water does a zig zag before hitting the bottom.

There were attempts in the past to build a hydroelectric plant here, but those efforts have not succeeded, and since then, the waterfall is now under government protection.

The last destination of the Golden Circle was Kerið crater. It’s believed that the crater formed through volcanic activity. Once the magma chamber emptied, it collapsed, forming the crater. The accumulation of water is not formed by rainfall, but is actually ground water.

On our last day before we left, we got the chance to try more Icelandic dishes. This time we had some lamb soup, dried fish, fermented shark, and some Einstök white ale, a local craft brew.

It’s not often that I would rave about soup, but I liked it so much I’ve been trying to recreate the flavour at home. It’s savoury soup with vegetables, lamb, and herbs/spices. I can’t say I was a huge fan of the dried fish and fermented shark though. The dried fish is served with butter and its flavour reminds me of super tough beef jerky with a light fish flavour, while the fermented shark has a texture of a ham with a soury tang. Perhaps it’s an acquired taste. The beer was great though.

That’s pretty much it for Iceland. We got the chance to try all sorts of local delicacies, and see a piece of nature we wouldn’t normally see in our part of the world. At the airport duty free, I even got to pick up some Brennivin, and a bottle of the Flóki sheep dung whiskey!

See more pictures of my trip to Iceland here

At Frankfurt Airport, when Edward and I lined up to check in, we were the only two Chinese people in line.  We seemed very out of place.  Some of the people gave us these stares that seemed to ask “why are you flying to Kiev?” We wanted to visit Chernobyl and shoot AK-47’s.

Our experience on the plane was dreadful.  Four crying babies/toddlers plus jet lag plus one hour delay was not a good combination. No sleep for me I guess.  Worst flight ever.

Awkward Car Ride

The hostel arranged transportation for us and so when we arrived, I looked for someone holding a sign with my name on it (first time ever!).  The driver was not happy at how we were late (not that we could do anything about it).

Probably since he was late, he drove like a maniac.  He drove way faster than the posted limits and passed every car on the highway.  The expected 45 min ride was reduced to almost 20 minutes.  The driver didn’t speak English.  No one said a word during the entire ride.  Awkward.

I had read before that people sometimes get driven to random places by taxi drivers before they get mugged.  By getting the hostel transportation, we minimized that risk.  Despite that, I was at peak alertness the whole time, making sure he was going the right general direction (I vaguely remembered the directions from the airport to the hostel).

Dream House Hostel

This is by far one of the hostels I’ve ever stayed at.  The staff were extremely helpful.  We asked them like a thousand questions and they happily answered them every time.  They treated security very seriously.  Kiev might not be safe, but I felt safe leaving my passport and cash in the locker in the room.

Security Measures

During our trip planning, we had read about the potential dangers in going to Kiev from the Canadian travel report about Ukraine.

The report tells travelers to “exercise a high degree of caution”.  It warns of dangers such as pickpockets, passport scams, armed robbery, racially motivated violence, muggings, etc.

Seeing how the hostel’s security was pretty good, we left our valuables in the room.  We each carried a decoy wallet with nothing in it except a scan of our passports and the cash we needed for the day.  No credit cards, no real ID, no cards at all.

If anybody steals a wallet, no big.  Better to lose $30 than all our money.  Nobody can scam us for our passports if we aren’t carrying it.  I didn’t even put on a hidden money belt.  The less I brought the better.  We felt pretty prepared, and luckily nothing happened.

Language

People in Kiev generally speak Ukranian or Russian.  I know neither.  I also don’t know the Cryllic writing system.  Even if I wanted to ask in English how to get somewhere, I can’t even pronounce the name of the place.  When I went to Greece, I could at least pick out the greek alphabet (side effect of studying math and physics), but in Kiev, I can’t even read anything.  Too bad.

Food

The first night we arrived in Kiev, we had no idea what kind of food was around here.  We couldn’t even read the menus anyway.  Picking a restaurant was a matter of randomly walking into a restaurant.  To our surprise, our random pick turned out to be Japanese food.  Interesting.  No pictures needed.  Vancouver has an abundance of Japanese restaurants.  Beer is worth taking a picture of though.  I can’t even read the label.

One of the hostel staff had recommended to us the Golden Dukat Coffee House.  I wish I took more pictures here, but I found someone else’s travel blog with good pictures of it!  Good coffee, good dessert.  And they have an English menu!

We were told that Borscht is one of the traditional soups in Ukraine.  When I tried it, its taste was so familiar and I had to think about where I had tried it before.  It tasted a lot like the vegetable soup that people can get at Hong Kong style cafes (羅宋湯).  I Googled it later, and apparently the Hong Kong recipe (while a little bit different) is a derivative of it.  What a coincidence.

Independence Square

By far the largest city square I have been to.  For me this was the place to see in Kiev.  The pictures here don’t do justice to how epic it was.

At the square, there would always be these people carrying pigeons around.  They kept coming up to me with me and I had no idea what they wanted.  Later I found out that apparently they’re trying to get tourists to take a picture with them holding a bird.  Not sure why that’s cool but okay.

There were also people dressed up like Mickey Mouse or Shrek trying to get little kids to take pictures with them for money.  They did this even when the temperature was above 30 degrees Celsius.

St. Andrew’s Church

Nearby our hostel, there was a nice church.  It’s architecture was quite different from anything I’d seen before.

Friendship Arch

This arch was built to commemorate the unification of Ukraine and Russia when Ukraine was still part of the Soviet Union.

Street Market

On the way from our hostel to Independence Square, we walked along a long stretch of road with many street vendors selling souvenirs, trinkets and other random stuff.  People there even sold gas masks, replica German WWII medals, and fake guns.

Trip Ideas for Next Time

After we came back to Vancouver, we found out that the hostel started offering tours to abandoned missile silos, helicopter rides, and Yak plane acrobatics!  If only the hostel were offering those tours.  We would have totally gone to those.  There’s always next time.

Links to photo albums:

• Kiev
• Kiev (Edward’s Photos)

Getting There

Just like the time I went to Barcelona, I had to wake up at a ridiculous hour to catch my flight.  Even though the flight was at 10, we had to take a few regional trains to get to the airport in Karlsruhe-Baden.  It was so early that when we got to Karlsruhe, we could see the sunrise.

Along the journey, a friend of mine forgot this iPod on the train and by the time he remembered, the train started leaving the station.  He watched the train leave with his iPod and could do nothing about it.  He immediately went to the Deutsche Bahn office for help.  The helpful staff there immediately called the next station that it would reach so that another employee could get on the train and retrieve it.  Lucky for him, they found it.  He would end up picking up his iPod after we came back from London.

I ended up sleeping for the whole flight and once we arrived we had to go through customs because the United Kingdom was not part of the “Schengen Area”, which is made up of a group of countries that allow travel within the group without going through customs, as in they have no internal border controls.

It was really easy talking to the customs agent because there was no longer any language barrier like in the rest of Europe.  It felt so nice speaking English again.  I no longer felt bad about not being able to speak a particular country’s language.  Speaking English felt so nice in fact, that I ended up having a brief chat with the customs agent about things like how I was liking Germany and what not.  Unlike the customs agents I see at the border between USA and Canada, the one in London was really nice.  I had initially thought that Londoners would give a really snobby vibe like the Parisians, but it didn’t seem like it so far.

After going through customs, we went to buy tickets for a bus to the city center.  Unfortunately for us, the lady selling tickets refused to accept our euros (good reason for that I suppose), so we had to exchange some money at a ridiculous rate.  We bought both our return ticket at the time too and for some reason the ticket lady wrote down 3:50 am for our return bus reservation (our flight was for 7 am).  We looked at it and we were just so sad to see we had to wake up at a ridiculous hour yet again to make our flight.  But then, we decided to stay up on our last night in London and not pay money for another night’s stay at the hostel.

The bus took us to Liverpool Street and from the looks of it, the districted seemed like an economic center.  People wearing business suits going about their business filled the streets.  From there, we bought our Oyster cards (kind of like the 八達通 in Hong Kong).  It is a prepaid card for taking the London public transit system.  One simply has to place the card on the scanner when entering and leaving the station.

We took the metro to King’s Cross and proceeded to find the hostel we booked.  It turns out that the hostel used to be a courthouse, which is kind of cool.  The interiors still have some of the furnishings of a courthouse and even has courtrooms that have been redecorated into hangout areas for guests.  Unfortunately for us though, when we actually saw our rooms, we were less than satisfied.  We got a super small room for eight people with beds arranged in two rows of four.  The only way we could get in and out of our beds was to crawl from the end instead of getting on from the side.  Solid walls surrounded the other sides and gave a really cramped feeling.  The showers there weren’t that clean either.  Regardless, that was the place that we had to stay at for the next two nights.

Imperial War Museum

Our first destination was the Imperial War Museum.  The museum chronicled the British Empire’s involvement in wars since the First World War up to the present.  In addition to exhibits from the two world wars, it even had exhibits on terrorism and the Iraq War.  Like many museums in London, this one was financially supported by the government so entry was free.  Upon seeing the building, one could already notice the 15 inch battleship cannons placed in the front – one from the HMS Ramillies and the other from HMS Roberts.

When we entered the museum, we were immediately overwhelmed by the sight of all the military vehicles in the museum’s atrium.  They had everything – tanks, fighter planes, rockets, artillery cannons, submarines, etc.  There was even a piece of rubble from the World Trade Center.

In addition to the exhibits about the wars that Britain fought, there were exhibits for the Holocaust as well as genocide in the modern era.  In the World War I section, there was even a reconstruction of a trench.  When I walked through it, I saw statues of soldiers going about their daily life at the time, like a soldier manning a machine gun or a soldier writing a letter to his parents.  In the World War II section, the museum managed to get a hold on the actual bronze eagle that was once on the Reichstag in Berlin.

We stayed at the museum until its closing time at 6 and afterward, we looked for a place to eat.  Just like in Rome, we looked at the Rick Steves’ European travel guide book for a recommendation.

Trafalgar Square

The guide book led us to a pub in Trafalgar square.  Before going to the pub, we decided to check out the place first.  We didn’t spend a lot of time here because we were in a hurry to eat.

The Lord Moon of the Mall

Following the guide book, it led us here to try out London’s “pub grub”.  The way the pub worked was that people had to find a table, take note of their table number and then go up to the counter to order food.  The servers would then bring the food over according to the table number.  I ordered sausages and mash (aka bangers and mash).

The pub itself seemed really British to me.  I don’t really know how, but it just gave me that vibe.  After our meal, we walked around the city for a little bit.  Since Trafalgar Square was really close to the tourist parts of London, we decided to go there.

Westminster

Westminster, one of the districts in London, is what people know London for.  This is where the Big Ben, Buckingham Palace, Westminster Abbey, and the Palace of Westminster are all situated in.

We didn’t stay here very long since we knew we’d be back here the next day when we took the walking tour.  We were all really tired too so we were all very eager to go back to the hostel to sleep.

Wellington Arch

At the beginning of the tour, everybody gathered by the Wellington Arch, a triumphal arch dedicated to Britain’s victories over Napoleon.  It is also the site of London’s second smallest police station up until 1992.

Part of the arch is also used for the ventilation from the London Underground (subway) and the heat coming out from the vents sometimes causes people to believe there is a fire.  Every now and then, somebody ends up calling the London Fire Brigade about it.

War Memorials

Throughout much of the city, war memorials can be seen almost everywhere.  Some are dedicated to certain people such as Churchill or Monty, while some are dedicated to Britain’s former colonies or even to the war effort on the home front.

Buckingham Palace – Changing of the Guard

Pretty much everyday at Buckingham Palace, tourists can see the guard change at Buckingham Palace.  We didn’t intend to go see this so when we arrived at Buckingham Palace, we saw a large concentration of tourists watching it.  There were so many people that I couldn’t even see what was going on.

To see the guards up close, we went elsewhere where there weren’t that many tourists.  In the past, people were allowed to go up to the guards and annoy them, but ever since one of the guards flipped out at a tourist, tourists are no longer allowed to go up to the guards anymore.

We tried to annoy the guards anyway though.  The tour guide got everyone to shout out “penis” really loud to see if it would make the guard laugh.  According to the guide, it works about 1 in 4 times.  This guard didn’t laugh though.

Trafalgar Square (again)

The first time we came here, we didn’t really know the significance of the statue in the city square, but the tour guide explained it to us.  The statue was of Admiral Lord Horatio Nelson, a British war hero involved in the Battle of Trafalgar against the French and Spanish navies.  His fleet won the battle so decisively that his fleet took no losses in ships despite having a smaller fleet than his enemies.  Unfortunately for him, he died during the battle.  It is said that his crew put his body in a wine barrel to preserve his body so that he could have a proper burial in England.  However, since his men had won such a huge victory, they ended up drinking the wine from the barrel that the admiral’s body was in, hence producing the phrase, “tapping the admiral”.

Horse Guards Parade

The next destination was the Horse Guards Parade, basically an area with an open field for horses.  It wasn’t that special I suppose.

Westminster Abbey

According to Rick Steves’, Westminster Abbey is one of the most magnificent churches in the English speaking world.  When I read that, I figured that it might not be as good as the churches that I saw in Rome.  Nonetheless, I still wanted to check out this place.  It would have been nice to see the inside, but it would cost a hefty 13 pounds to enter.  With such an expensive admission fee (compared to churches everywhere else which have free entry), I couldn’t bring myself to pay that.  The churches in Rome are probably way nicer anyways.

Palace of Westminster and the Big Ben

Pretty much right beside the abbey was the house of parliament, also known as the Palace of Westminster.  Attached to this building was the Big Ben.  I didn’t really get a good picture of the palace during the day though.

More Pub Grub

At the end of the tour, we went to a pub that had connections with the tour guide so we all got discounts on our meal.  I ordered fish and chips, one of Britain’s specialties I suppose.

Churchill War Rooms

After eating, I went to the Churchill War Rooms Museum, while my friends went to the National Gallery.  The war rooms was a museum set up such that it displayed the underground complex that the British government used during WWII.  Many of the rooms had been untouched since the end of the war.  In some instances, once the war ended, the staff went home and never returned to the command center.

The meeting room, map room, and many of the dormitories in the complex still had the old 40’s vibe.  Paraphernalia was left untouched.  Even maps showed the old names for different British colonies and still had the pin holes leftover from mapping out troop movements.

A large slab of concrete covered most of the complex to protect its occupants from bombs.  Nobody knew how well the slab would protect people, but luckily, the complex was never hit.  While walking around the complex, there are areas where a speaker will play the air raid siren sound.  I guess that was for authenticity, which was really cool.

Buckingham Palace

Now that the wave of tourists had subsided, I finally got the chance to get a good look at Buckingham Palace.  It was one of those places that didn’t look amazing in architecture and was a place where one would have to go while on a trip to London.  Maybe the next time I come to London, I will buy tickets to visit the inside of the palace.

The Cafe in the Crypt

For dinner, we looked at the guide book yet again to find a place.  This time we were recommended a place called “The Cafe in the Crypt”.  It was under a crypt of a church in Trafalgar Square.  When I ordered my food, the server for some reason was really delighted by the fact that I could speak English.

Platform 9 3/4

I hadn’t known before that in the Harry Potter books, Harry Potter went to Hogwarts from King’s Cross Station, which happened to be the station that our hostel was close to.  On our way back to the hostel that night, we came across the famous Platform 9 3/4.  There was even a cart halfway through the wall – just like in the books.

English Breakfast

Because the breakfast at our hostel sucked so much, we all decided to go have an English style breakfast on our last day.  The breakfast came with eggs, mushrooms, bacon, tomatoes and sausages.  It was really oily, but delicious.

The British Museum

According to Rick Steves, the British Museum “is the best chronicle of human civilization…ever”.  With a recommendation like that, we had to go to it.  After seeing it, I agree with Rick Steves.  The museum had information on pretty much every continent in the world.  Its most well known artifact, the Rosetta Stone was also on display.  Apparently, it was the stone tablet that allowed modern understanding of Egyptian hieroglyphs.

In the exhibit on ancient Greece, the museum showcased a lot of sculptures from the Parthenon.  I guess that would explain why I didn’t see any of those things when I went to Greece.  Another really nice exhibit was the one on mechanical clocks.  It displayed a lot of the different mechanisms that clocks were built out of.  Being part mechanical engineer, this was of a lot of interest to me.  I ended up analyzing the entire mechanism and figuring out exactly how clocks work.

The Millennium Bridge

Our next destination was the Tate Modern Art Gallery.  Before going inside, I went to see the nearby attractions first.  I learned of the Millennium Bridge during my engineering courses because it was an example of a badly designed bridge since it was affect by resonance.  Simply put, the bridge physically wobbled as people walked on it.

Shakespeare’s Globe

Based on the original Globe Theatre, this theatre is a modern reconstruction of the old one that burned down.  I didn’t know before that the original one had burned down.  I thought I was seeing the original.

St. Paul’s Cathedral

During the Blitz, St Paul’s Cathedral became a national symbol of resistance.  During the sustained strategic bombing of Britain during WWII, this cathedral somehow still stood.  Many of Britain’s heroes are buried here, namely Admiral Lord Horatio Nelson, Sir Winston Churchill, Florence Nightingale, the Duke of Wellington, and Charles Cornwallis.

Normally, it costs money to go inside as a tourist, but since it was Sunday, the church was open for church services.  This allowed tourists to go in for free, but they weren’t allowed to take any pictures.  As usual, I disobeyed that and took pictures anyway.

I probably could have done something similar at Westminster Abbey also, but that was on the other side of town so I didn’t bother.

Tate Modern Art Gallery

Like many museums in London, this one was also free.  Looking at the different works of art here, I understood pretty much none of them without reading the description.  Interpreting art just isn’t my thing I guess.  Although, there was an exhibit about anti-Nazi works of art that was really interesting.  One photo in particular portrayed Nazi Germany as a house of cards, while another showed a bunch of skeletons depicting what Germany will be like in the future.  Another photo, although not anti-Nazi, it depicted the Japanese waking up the “sleeping giant” known as China when they invaded.

Chutneys Euston

For dinner, we went to a vegetarian Indian buffet.  For 7 pounds, we could eat as much as we wanted.  What a good deal.  That was my first time ever eating Indian food and it was really delicious.  I ate about three plates before I was full.  I didn’t get hungry until 3 in the morning.

Tower Bridge

At night, we went to see the Tower Bridge and the London Tower.  I originally thought the London Tower was just a tower, but it turned out the tower was actually part of a giant castle.

We walked across the bridge and saw the HMS Belfast, a British cruiser docked on the side of the river.  Apparently, the ship had been converted into a museum and was part of the Imperial War Museum.  If I had known about it earlier, I probably would have visited this too.

Going Home

Since our bus time was 3:50 am from Liverpool Street Station, we took a taxi to there to wait.  We went to a nearby restaurant and stayed there for a few hours playing cards.  When the bus came, we got on it and just slept.  We slept some more on the plane and on the train until we got home.  My original plan was to nap when I got home, but after so many naps earlier, it didn’t feel necessary anymore.  It probably would have ruined my sleeping schedule too.  I still felt the effects of the sleep deprivation the day after too.  Either way, it was a good trip.  I think I want to come back some time in the future.

More photos here

For Easter weekend, the interns and I went to Greece. Instead of only going to the famous tourist areas like Athens, we also went to a city called Volos to check out the beaches they had there.

Getting to Greece

Typically, we leave early in the morning for trips, but this time we left during the night in order to make our morning flight to Volos, Greece at Frankfurt-Hahn Airport. Originally, we all thought the airport was in Frankfurt, but apparently, it was a 2 hour bus ride. Apparently, Ryanair likes to use airports named after big cities, but the airport itself isn’t located in that city.

We started our journey by taking the U-Bahn to the Stuttgart main train station to catch the a train to Frankfurt am Main. From there we would take a bus to Frankfurt-Hahn Airport. We arrived in Frankfurt at about 3 AM and during this time, we ran around the streets looking for our bus. Because of all these transfers, we barely had time to sleep. I think I only slept for about 4 hours intermittently. It was a good thing that not a lot of people took the train at night because this let us lie down on two seats and put our legs on the seats in front to sleep better.

After 2 train transfers, and a bus transfer, we boarded the plane. By now it was already morning. We were all still really tired. All we did was sleep. I’m surprised I still managed to fall asleep really well even with little kids and babies crying around me. I didn’t really get a chance to look out the window very much though. Although for the brief moments that I was awake, I managed to see the Swiss/Austrian Alps (I don’t know what our flight path was).

I left the house at around 11:30 PM, and arrived in Volos 10 hours later. If only we knew about the Frankfurt-Hahn thing, we would have tried to fly out of Stuttgart International Airport.

Volos

We checked out the town for a bit and stayed there for a night. This place isn’t very known among tourists going to Greece, so there weren’t a lot of tourists anywhere. We pretty much went to this place to check out the beaches.

We rented a car here so we could drive from Volos to Athens the next day. When we first got into the car we realized it was almost out of gas. We thought that it was normal to get the car with a full tank and return it with a full tank. While driving around Volos, we saw how the Greek drove. I’ve got to say that the drivers in Volos are some of the worst I’ve ever seen. I don’t know why, but nobody cares about driving on their own lane (lanes aren’t even painted most of the time). Nobody yields for pedestrians unless there’s a light. And while we were driving, people rode mopeds without wearing helmets and all they did was squeeze through spaces that cars couldn’t and cut off the cars. On the highway, they even drove on the shoulder.

After looking at the beaches, we drove up to the top of the mountain overlooking Volos, a site for archaeological excavation. It was supposed to be the ruins of a city from 5th century BC, but we didn’t really see any ruins except for some stones buried solidly in the grass. But what we did see was the most spectacular view.

In the evening, we tried Greek hard liquor called Tsipouro. The ones we got had 42% alcohol by volume. The taste of it was repulsive. I’ve drank hard liquor with a similar percentage of alcohol before, but those didn’t taste bad. The food they served with it was quite good though. I particularly enjoyed eating the octopus. Later on, we ate some more Greek seafood. We got to try other foods like ray-fish, squid, and cuttlefish. I’m craving some of that right about now.

On the Road to Athens

We all knew of the high oil prices nowadays so we thought it might have been more economical to take public transit from Volos to Athens. We asked about a car rental and after doing the math, we found that the two options were about the same, so we opted to rent a car. We drove the Opel Corsa for about 330 km from Volos to Athens. Little did we know, we had to pay tolls on the highway. The Greek also like to put up these mini-churches on the side of the road. On the highway, we could see these and they represent the people who died there.

For a while, we didn’t really know where we were going once we got into Athens. Once we arrived, we tried to find a suitable parking place for the car that was near a metro station. We decided not to drive around Athens since it would be very hard to find a parking spot. The car simply got us around Volos and to Athens. We stopped the car and asked people for directions multiple times. Out in the suburbs, not many people spoke English so communication was quite difficult. Although, on one occasion, one of the locals spoke Hindi, which one of us happen to know.

The first place we tried to park at turned out to be partially blocking a driveway so we had to move. While parking the car though, I opened the door slightly to look outside to check the spacing of the car to help the driver. At this moment, my phone slipped out of the car seat and onto the street. Luckily I realized my phone was missing as the car started driving away. I quickly got out and ran after some people on the street who picked up my phone. Luckily they were just walking away thinking about whether to keep it or not. I literally ran out of the car and called out to them saying, “Thats mine!” despite the fact that they might only know Greek and not English. If I had been even a minute slower, my phone would have been lost. Good thing the people who found it were nice enough to give it back. I was prepared to run after them.

After a huge sigh of relief, we found a new parking spot. We left the car near an apartment about 20 minutes by train from our hostel for two nights. Every now and then we’d think of the car and hoped that it was still there. Even if the lady who lived at the apartment said we could park there, we still weren’t sure if it would get towed or ticketed.

The Acropolis

Once we checked into the hostel, we walked up to the Acropolis, the location of the most famous landmark in Athens. Unfortunately, due to a restoration project, there was a huge metal crane in front of the Parthenon. I don’t know why, but landmarks I visit always seem to be under maintenance whenever I go there. But the good thing was that going up to the Acropolis was free because of Easter.

At the top of the Acropolis, there were a lot of remains of ancient Greek architecture. Among these was the Odeon of Herodes Atticus, The Erechtheum, and the Parthenon.

I don’t really know a lot about Greek history, but it seemed like these places attracted a lot of tourists simply because they’re famous. I doubt a lot of people have an in depth knowledge about the Greek culture. I’m sure a lot of people just looked at these ruins and thought they were just some old stones.

Greek Architecture around the City

Apart from the Acropolis, I also saw many other ancient Greek buildings. A lot of the Greek architecture was very similar because of their use of the columns, but it was still very interesting to look at.

It seemed like because it was Easter, a lot of the attractions that otherwise would have cost money were free. We would have had to pay to go see the Temple of Zeus.

Around the City

One of the things that was very peculiar about Athens is the amount of stray dogs on the street. I thought it might just be owners letting their dogs run around freely without a leash, but these dogs had no leash.

While we were walking around, a lady was walking her dog on a leash when the leash caught onto my friend’s leg. My friend, seeing this dog, decided to pet it. Unfortunately, that dog’s attitude isn’t same as what he’s used to in America. The dog tried to take a bite at his hand. Luckily, he moved his hand away fast enough before he got bit. The dog’s mouth was so close that its slobber got on his hands. The lady didn’t even apologize for it. It made us think that the Greeks weren’t very nice people.

Everywhere we went in the city, we saw tourists. In fact, there were so many tourists that I sometimes heard more people speak English than Greek. And as tourists, they were everywhere in the city center. There were tourists from all sorts of countries, but when it comes to interacting with the locals, it was either English or Greek.

Like in Paris, people tried to sell me things on the street. Instead of selling mini Eiffel Towers, they sold this toy tomato. When you throw it on the ground, it’ll splatter, but slowly go back to it’s original form. It looked so cool, but it seemed like something that would only be cool for about 5 minutes if I had one. A lot of people also tried to sell fake brand name sunglasses and purses. I’d laugh really hard if they tried to sell fake LV bags on the street in front of the LV store.

Apart from the old Greek buildings, we also hiked up to the top of a hill to check out the view from the top. There was also a church there.

I don’t really know why we went up to the top the hill in all the trips we take. It’s something that we always do. Try to get as high up as we can just to look at the bottom.

Christian Culture

Prior to visiting, I never knew the people in Greece were so Christian. Seeing that it was Easter weekend, I saw a bit of their Easter traditions.

At night, people held candles and all walked to a church. I don’t know what they did when they got there, but the walk attracted large tourist crowds wondering what they were up to.

Food in Athens

Since Athens is one big tourist trap, one can expect to see lots of restaurants selling overpriced food for tourists. But regardless of that, we got to try some really delicious, but probably stereotypical, Greek food. One of the things that confused me though is why they called their salad “Greek Salad” when just “salad” would have sufficed. Maybe that’s their way of getting tourists to try it.

People around the city were all grilling lambs for Easter, but unfortunately, I never got the chance to try some. I’m not missing it though, because I was never a fan of lamb meat anyway.

National Archaeology Museum

On our second day in Athens, we visited the National Archaeology Museum to look at the history of Greece. Luckily for us, we didn’t have to pay to get in because of Easter.

Unfortunately, a lot of the exhibits weren’t open so we didn’t spend a long time here.

More Beaches

Because we didn’t get enough of the beaches in Volos, we decided to visit a beach in Athens too. What surprised me here is the girl that decided to go sunbathing with her top off even though it wasn’t a nude beach.

At one point, we all sat down by the beach enjoying some beer. That the one of last opportunities for relaxation in Greece before we had go to leave the next day.

Going Home

In order to avoid traffic at the tolls, we woke up so early that we had to miss the free breakfast at 7 at the hostel. We all got up at 5 in the morning and by 6:30, we were on the road back to the airport in Volos. Despite getting a full night’s sleep, I somehow still slept for 3/4 of the car ride back.

On the drive home, we could see smoke coming from some of the houses. At first we thought someone’s house was burning down, but later we figured that it might have been people grilling lamb for Easter.

Later, we realized that we left way too early. We aimed to arrive at 11 am, but we arrived at around 9 am for a flight that departed at 2:15 pm. The airport in Volos was also in the middle of nowhere. We spent the next two hours doing next to nothing. During this time, I finally finished reading that book I started a while back.

When we returned the rental car, the amount of gas in the tank was in the red zone. We wondered if the car still had enough gas to go to the nearest gas station. It didn’t seem likely that there was a gas station anywhere near the airport. It was in the middle of nowhere.

We tried accounting for all the things that could make us late like looking for the right way to go, traffic jams, etc., and none of those things happened. For the whole trip one of my friends kept making fun of my other friend for making us all wake up early. In fact, he was so worried about being late that he thought we should skip coffee in addition breakfast. Skipping breakfast and not eating for 5 hours wasn’t very fun.

On the plane, I was bored out of my mind. My phone and iPod had all run out of battery and I was forced to sit there staring out the window. Even doing that was hard because I didn’t get a window seat. Because of my boredom, I took some random pictures.

We arrived at Frankfurt-Hahn Airport at around 4 in the afternoon, and from there we took the bus back. We all spent so much money in Athens that we all had just enough to get home. We didn’t think we’d make the 4 o clock bus in our original planning, so we arrived at the Frankfurt Hbf a lot earlier than expected. Getting to places early seemed like the trend of the day. We got there at about 6 in the evening, and had to wait until 9 PM for our train. By now I had been on the road for almost 12 hours. We ended up browsing through a bookstore and walking around town until our train arrived. After 17 hours, I finally got home.

More photos here

From the Basilique du Sacre-Coeur, to the Notre Dame, the Eiffel Tower, the Musee du Louvre, and the Arc de Triomphe, it wasn’t very hard to take tons of photos in Paris because all the tourist attractions were just so beautiful.

After being in Europe for over 2 months, I finally visited Paris three days ago. Going to Paris is something that many people in North America (probably the world too) dream to do. I woke up early in the morning for my train from Stuttgart that left at 7 and met up with my friends from Bosch.

On the train, sitting together proved rather difficult because that went against the preassigned seating provided by the French TGV. We tried our best to find vacant seats, but in the end, two of us ended up sitting elsewhere. I managed to sit with the rest of the group for the duration of the train ride.

Along the way, the train passed through the French countryside. Only farm fields separated Paris and Stuttgart, with the exception of a few cities and towns. We joked about how the only things in France were farm fields and an Eiffel Tower. After a four hour journey, we arrived at the eastern train station in Paris.

The train station in Paris set my first impression the city. I didn’t see Paris in the beautiful setting that all the tourism advertisements showed. Seeing that the first place I go to in any city is often the train station, I ended up basing my first impression on that. To my surprise, the metro here lacked the maintenance that the trains in Stuttgart got. In general, the trains looked much dirtier and vandalized in more places. I saw graffiti in all of the train tunnels, and beside all the train tracks. In some areas, the station smelled like a dirty washroom. The trains themselves looked very old as well, but that’s just aesthetics. One of the trains even used tires and not train wheels, so it ran like a bus on train tracks. Despite this, the metro served as our only means of transportation within the city. We took the train to our first destination.

Our first destination was the Sacre-Coeur, a basilica located on the summit of butte Montmartre, the highest point of Paris. Unfortunately, the Sacre-Coeur was not exactly in the best part of town. The enormous amount of street performers, street vendors, and people trying to get me to donate money caught my attention right away. They really liked bugging the foreigners. I guess they think that if foreigners can afford to come to Europe, they must have lots of money. Some of them were like pushy salesmen that wouldn’t leave people alone. Some of them even know how to greet people in different languages. I heard them say phrases like “ni hao”, “konnichiwa”, and “arigatou”. I wondered about how many more of these people there’d be at the Eiffel Tower, when I already saw of many of these people at a lesser known landmark. I tried my best to ignore these people and focus on where I was, the Sacre-Coeur.

Looking at the basilica from afar reminded me of the Dom in Cologne, but this place was a little smaller. Unfortunately, the church did not permit photography, otherwise I’d post pictures of this place. I must say though, after seeing the Cologne Dom, this place didn’t seem that special to me.

When we left for the Notre Dame afterward, we passed through the poorer part of town. For some reason a big crowd of people stood outside selling prepackaged food that one could get from the supermarket. Why would they end up selling the food that they bought? Or maybe they never bought them at all.

Our next destination was the Notre Dame. The Notre Dame was one of those places that almost everybody knew, so many tourists visited it. In fact, there were so many tourists there that the city decided to post armed guards wielding FAMA’s at the site in case anybody tried to cause trouble. Like many other European churches, the church also had the old European design. The design here definitely rivaled the Cologne Dom.

The Notre Dame was situated beside the Seine River, so the natural next thing to do was to walk along the Seine. Unlike the Rhine River, the Seine was a lot more polluted. As we walked, I saw many more street vendors, but these ones sold retro photographs of Paris, post cards and various antiques. In the distance, we could see the Eiffel Tower. Before heading there though, we went to visit the outside of the Louvre. Seeing the pyramid in the courtyard instantly reminded me of The Da Vinci Code, when they revealed the location of the Holy Grail. Further outside the Louvre was the Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel which was a smaller arch that served the same purpose as the Arc de Triomphe. Further down the road, was an obelisk that Napoleon once took from Egypt during the Napoleonic Wars.

We walked along the Avenue des Champs-Elysees to the Arc de Triomphe, but before getting there, we had to hurry to the Eiffel tower so that we didn’t miss the time we reserved online. Because of our reservation, we didn’t have to wait hours like everyone else. Hundreds, if not thousands of tourists waited their turn. As I expected, there were a lot of street vendors here too, but the ones here weren’t as pushy.

In every picture I’ve ever seen the Eiffel Tower looked so small, so the sheer size of it total surprised me. At the base of the tower, I tried to take as many pictures as I could of the tower using the photography knowledge that I crammed the night before. Hopefully, my pictures turn out really well.

The view at the top of the Eiffel Tower totally struck me in awe. One could see as far as the eye could see. I pretty much saw all of Paris from here. In the distance, I could point out some of the landmarks such as the Louvre, Seine River, Arc de Triomphe, and Les Invalides. I also saw how the streets were laid out in the whole city. It differs a lot from the modern urban planning in the way that the roads don’t form grids. They seemed to go in random directions. No wonder it was so hard to find where we were going at times.

I could even see rain clouds slowly moving toward us. We didn’t choose the best day to go to Paris, but we couldn’t exactly predict the weather a month in advance. On the way down, it rained pretty hard, but it stopped about two hours later.

In the evening, we decided to go for a drink at a local cafe, since we were all so tired from carrying our things and walking around all day. Looking at the menu, I found that the price of beer is very high. In Stuttgart, I typically pay around 3 to 4 euro for half a litre of beer, but here, it costs 8 euros. That makes sense, I guess. Stereotypes do say that Germans are a lot more crazy about their beer than the French. I ended up trying a beer called Saint Omer. I don’t really know how to describe the beer so I can only really say that it tasted quite good, but not as good as German beer though.

After our little break, we went back to the Eiffel Tower to take pictures of it from afar. As the sky began to darken, the tower lit up. It must look even prettier at night. Unfortunately, we didn’t stick around to see it.

We went to the hostel since we were all so tired. For dinner, we ate baguettes that we bought from the local supermarket. And since we were in France, we had to have a bottle of wine. From the window, we could see the Sacre-Coeur.

After dinner, we went around some more to see what Paris looked like in the night. Because of the rain earlier, the wet cobblestone roads reflected the lights nearby. We stopped at a bar for a quick drink before heading home. This time, I ordered a beer called an Amstel. It had quite a strange after taste. By about 11:30 pm, we were all ready to sleep because we all woke up so early to catch the train and walked around so much, so we went back to the hostel where would recharge before continuing our journey the next day.

Little did we know when we organized our trip to Paris, this weekend would fall on the time change for daylight savings time, and as a result we had one less hour in Paris. We just slept one hour less to make up for it.

In the morning, we woke up early to get to the Louvre when it opened to avoid the enormous line up that we saw the day before. After passing the security check, we went to get our tickets. To our surprise, residents of the EU could get admission for free. I showed the ticket staff my work visa and got my free ticket. That saved me ten euros.

The main highlight of the Louvre was probably the Mona Lisa by Leonardo Da Vinci. I don’t think many people know why the painting is so famous, and I don’t either. Like everyone else, I went to see it purely because it’s famous.

The whole area we were in housed many Italians and Spanish paintings from the Renaissance. I didn’t understand any of the paintings, but I noticed that people back then really liked to paint about Christianity. A lot of the paintings showed Jesus on the cross. In other paintings, they really liked to paint naked people. Naked men, women and kids showed up in so many paintings.

The next group of exhibits we went featured art from the Americas, Africa, and Asia. They displayed mostly sculptures from various native groups living in the area a long time ago. It was quite interesting to see the difference in art among all these cultures.

Afterward, we looked at the section on Egyptian art. Here they showed various relics left over from the Ancient Egyptian civilization. They displayed various styles of sarcophagi used in the past and also urns of mummified remains. Among all the relics, the ones they showed the most were the stone tablets and papyrus paper with hieroglyphics written on them. I don’t know what any of it means, so for all I know the writing could just be something ordinary like, “today I went fishing by the river.”

At this point, we realized that the museum was so large that we wouldn’t be able to get through it all. So we looked at the map and chose to see what we wanted to see most.

We then arrived at the exhibit about French culture from the 14th to 17th century. The decorations in the rooms was decorated the same way as the old French style and it made the room look so beautiful.

Our next exhibit was Ancient Greece. The majority of items here were statues of the Greek Gods. These statues were pretty much everywhere, but they were all interesting too. It goes to show how devout the Greeks were when it came to worship.

The next item on our list was to find the Code of Hammurabi. Along the way, we went through the exhibit for Mesopotamia. Although not far from Greece geographically, their culture differed immensely.

When we arrived at the Code of Hammurabi, I saw a giant stone, but on it were a set of laws inscribed into it. It basically spoke of the consequences of actions that people did. A lot of it resembled the principle of “an eye for an eye”. For example, if a builder builds a house collapses on its owner, then the builder shall be put to death.

After being at the Louvre for about five hours, we were ready to leave. We didn’t even see half of the museum. I’m sure there are people that stay there for like ten hours or something. I even saw people sitting down with their artboards and drawing the sculptures they saw. As we left, we saw a huge crowd of people waiting to get in. I’m glad we went early. We barely waited at all.

After leaving the Louvre, we went to the metro to make our way to the Arc de Triomphe, located on the Avenue des Champs-Elysees, the rich district in Paris. It is a monument constructed for Napoleon to showcase his triumphs. It stands in the center of the Place Charles de Gaulle. The monument also honours the soldiers who fought and died for France during the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars. Also there is the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier from the First World War.

The flame at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier is always lit. It serves as a memorial for all the soldiers killed in action who could not be identified during the First World War. I went up to the grave to pay my respects and gave him the traditional three bows that the Chinese typically give to the deceased.

Also there was a plaque of Charles de Gaulle’s famous BBC radio speech to the French people in 1940, telling them not to lose hope, and that the war does not only affect France, but rather the entire world.

The arc also named the major victorious battles of the Napoleonic Wars. The inside walls of the arc name most of the generals who served under Napoleon and the names of those who died are underlined.

When we were finished at the arc, we went back to the Eiffel Tower to get one last look of it before leaving. On the side of the tower were the names of famous French engineers. As an engineer, myself, I had to look at each name to see which ones I recognized. I ‘d say I knew about a quarter of them. They were people like, Lagrange, Carnot, Ampere, Fourier, Clapeyron and Laplace.

While we all took more pictures of the tower, we had the idea of getting our French friend to wear the stereotypical French hat and hold a baguette while we took pictures of him with the Eiffel Tower in the background. It was so stereotypically French that this teenage girl got so excited seeing that she wanted a picture with him. We joked that if working at Bosch didn’t work out for him, he could make a living taking pictures with tourists in Paris! We stayed there until it was time leave for our train back home.

Paris was quite a beautiful city to visit, especially in the tourist locations, but some parts of the city were quite dirty, especially on the metro. That part of the city I didn’t really like, but the rest was amazing.

On the train, I tried to go to my assigned seat, but unfortunately a family had taken up all the seats there. I didn’t want to make them all find new seats, since I knew how hard it was to get everyone to sit together as a group without reservations, so I went to find an empty seat instead.

On the way home, due to some technical difficulty, the train made an unscheduled stop in the middle of nowhere. This delayed us by about twenty minutes and we all wondered how we were going to catch our connecting train. We found out later that our connecting train was going to wait.

As we crossed the border, the police came by checking people’s passports. In the entire wagon, only one of my friends and I were checked for passports. They did that probably because of the fact that we looked foreign.

As the train got closer and closer to Stuttgart, I was reminded of the fact that I’d have to go to work the next day and that I’d return to my usual routine once again. At the same time, I felt really good about the fact that I can now cross off another place on my list of places to visit.

Photo album here