Introductions:

Hi there. Welcome back to the show. You’re listening to Practically Happy, episode 299. I hope that you enjoyed the summer series. The Pass the Mic series where I interviewed and shared some encore interviews with some of my favorite people. If you tuned in, I hope that you found some nuggets of wisdom and some relatable experiences that gave you some ideas and inspiration and helped you feel good in your daily life.

Today’s episode is going to be a very casual, candid overview of my summer, including some details on my trip to Turkey and Greece, which was the pinnacle of my summer vacation.

Summertime Overview

Because our family, both Dave’s family and my family, all live across the country from us, they all, most of our, Core family of origin live in Salt Lake City, Utah.

We have a couple siblings scattered, but most of the density of our families, both his and mine live in Salt Lake City. So sometimes our vacations, both holiday or summer vacations, end up being these extended stays where we home base in the West and then do-little trips from there, depending on What the schedule is with the with both families and this summer ended up being that way that we had a trip with Dave’s family plans to California and a trip with my family to Arizona and it made sense.

The most sense for us to just go hang out in the West rather than flying back and forth across the country multiple times during the summer. We prepped and handled logistics for managing our house care and our pet care and our kids and all the stuff. Our kids came with us to Utah, but we did all the things that we needed to do to get prepared for our family to be in the western United States for five weeks this summer.

That included two weeks when I would be abroad, and the kids and Dave would all be in the U. S. It was a lot to plan and prepare for this summer adventure and, we love to travel so much. I love to travel. It felt worthwhile to manage all the logistics. We had an interesting time packing where we were packing for living in Utah while we went to California for a beach trip, went to Lake Powell for a lake trip, went up to the mountains.

And then also my two weeks away, we packed bigger suitcases with lots of packing cubes, with different types of clothing and accessories and things like things that we would need for the different types of trips that we were doing. And then we headed out.

Some Summer Hiccups

While I want to spend the majority of this episode telling you about Greece and Turkey, because that was the pinnacle of my summer, it was a really wonderful experience, I also want to just give you a quick overview of The weeks before that, and some hiccups that we ran into the major one being that our house sitter pet sitter didn’t end up being a good fit right from when we landed, she was having some issues and we did the best that we could to resolve them over the first weekend that we were there, but then ultimately we realized that it wasn’t going to be a good fit that she wasn’t going to be able to stay for the entire five weeks as we had planned.

I quickly adjusted. Dave and the boys’ flights so that they could go home and resume the house and pet care and Plum who was a companion ticket on Delta Airlines, which I’m a SkyMiles member. I love my Delta credit card That’s my major travel credit card and one of the benefits of having the membership that we have is a companion pass once a year you have A flight that you get a buy one, get one free to anywhere domestically that Delta flies.

Our flights to Utah this summer, for whatever reason, the flights were expensive this year. They were almost $900 from Virginia to Utah, which is. Silly expensive. It’s never that much. That was probably twice as much as we expect to pay on a regular basis. We were there for a long time. We needed it to be the, these specific days.

And so, we went ahead and paid that, but it was nice because we only had to buy four tickets. Plum was a companion pass. That meant that for her to go home early with Dave and the boys, I would have to buy her a whole new ticket and I didn’t want to do that. So, in addition to the logistics of sending the boys home early to take over the house and pet care, I then didn’t have Dave staying in Utah while I was abroad.

And my mom, who’s our go to childcare, she’s so wonderful, generous, and helpful when it comes to watching our kids when we’re both away. We, use that. Service from her at least once a year, she was coming to Greece and Turkey with me. So, I needed to figure out, quickly how to have Plum taken care of for two weeks when her dad was not going to be there.

Lots of flexibility with change

Luckily, my family is super generous and helpful and we have really great relationships and so I was able to send a group text to all of my sisters and sisters in law and just say, can you help for a couple days at a time and within an hour I had all of the dates covered where she was going to just cousin hop and hang out with my sisters and my sisters in law and their kids for The time that we were gone, this ended up being a really fun solution.

Plum is social. She loves her cousins. She has great relationships with them, fun families. It’s summertime. So, everyone was doing fun stuff. In fact, the first week that she was staying with my sister-in-law, her daughter, who’s similar age was doing a musical theater camp and they had a space left.

So, I was able to sign her up. She got to do this musical theater camp. That was unexpected. There were lots of changes. From the time we landed within a couple hours, I was managing logistics again that, I thought I had everything taking care of. I had spent months preparing for these five weeks abroad, and then it was such a good reminder that despite your best planning when it comes to travel, things are going to go wrong and being able to stay open and flexible and look for new solutions. And what can we do? What’s the best way to solve this? Even though it’s not perfect, made it so that, even though it was stressful.

I felt like low grade nauseous for the first couple of weeks that we were traveling, just knowing that all the plans that I had prepared got flipped on their head. We did find solutions for them all. And so, I had to just, practice what I preach in terms of mindfulness and acceptance and finding some space to just process through the disappointment and frustration and stress.

And know that even though these decisions and shifts that we made weren’t my first choice, and they weren’t what we had originally planned, that they were solutions that were going to work out. Really letting go of the things that I couldn’t control came, really into play heavily this summer.

There were lots of things outside of my control that I just wish I could have micromanaged, and I couldn’t. So that was, just candidly really stressful, tricky. I was managing a lot of that and my own emotions around the changes while we were also trying to enjoy spending a week with Dave’s family on the beach in California, which was a really fun trip.

We stayed in a hotel in Newport Beach We were able to walk to the beach every day and do big family meals together and just spend time with Dave’s family, all of his siblings and their kids that we don’t get to see all that often.

And then when we returned from that trip, we spent a couple days back in Utah, both in southern Utah, exploring some fun hikes down south and then up in Park City, where Dave’s family has a cabin and we stayed there for a couple nights and explored a little bit on Main Street, which is one of our favorite places.

It sits on the border of Utah and Arizona because it’s created By the Glen Canyon Dam, which stops the Colorado River and fills, basically fills the Grand Canyon with water. So below the Glen Canyon Dam is the Grand Canyon. And above it is this, huge lake that is red rock canyons and, incredible rock formations and lots of interesting topography.

It’s hot, it’s, I’m right in the middle of the deserts. It’s hot beautiful lake that I grew up going to. We’ve had a houseboat there since I was a child myself, and it’s been fun being a parent now, taking my kids and having them be able to have that experience because we are not living in Utah near everyone.

We only hit on the Lake Powell week with my family in the summer. Every summer, Several years. I think it had been three or four since the last time that we were there at the, in the area around the time. So, we were able to take advantage of going and doing that trip. And even though we were just there for a couple of days, it was super fun.

It feels like home to me, and it’s starting to feel that way for my kids, too. And that’s wonderful. So, we did all these kind of little mini summer vacations. It feels like what our summer would be like if we lived in Utah because we home based there and then did these side trips.

And after Lake Powell, the boys flew home to take care of the house and our animals. I got Plum ready to bounce around and stay with them. We called it cousin camp. She just got to stay with cousins for a couple of days at a time while I was gone. And then I packed up my suitcase for heading abroad.

The First Half of my Greece & Turkey Trip

I packed a couple distinct sections of my suitcase. One was my swimwear and me. Tank tops and shorts and sundresses for Greece, and then I packed some lightweight linen clothes with sleeves and shoulders and knee coverings and scarves for all the Turkey travelers for the time in Turkey, which we had heard was, a little bit more conservative of a country.

It’s not legally Muslim, but there is a strong Muslim population and presence. So, dressing a little bit more conservatively was what we were told would be most appropriate. I had been excited about this trip to Turkey for months and months. Turkey came on my radar about three years ago when I had a good friend from Richmond spend a month.

A couple weeks there and following along with her stories on Instagram, just enlightened me to this entire country that I had not really thought about very much. I didn’t really know exactly where it was. I wasn’t very familiar with its history. I was fascinated watching as my friend traveled through Istanbul and throughout the center of Turkey.

It seemed so intriguing. When it came up as an option for hosting my first women’s trip abroad in combination with Trova trip, I thought this itinerary in Istanbul and Cappadocia would be perfect fun to have it be European, which is familiar, but also have, the Asian piece that most of Turkey is in Asia.

A little about planning the Turkey Trip

It’s one of the only countries that spans the continental divide, and Istanbul is one of the only major cities in the world, it may be the only major city in the world that is divided by continent. Half of the city is in Europe and half is in Asia. A few days after launching the trip, people were starting to sign up, and I got an email that someone had registered.

And so, I went to head over to the website to look to see who it was. And it was my mom, who is an avid traveler, loves traveling. The world has traveled a ton and I called her and said, hey mom, did you just sign up for my trip to Turkey? And she said, yes, I’ve always wanted to go to Turkey.

This seemed like a perfect opportunity. So sweet and fun. For her to sign up. I love traveling with my mom. Like I mentioned at the beginning of the show, we travel together often for sisters’ trips, and I really was looking forward to traveling with her in this group trip. She’s got a great personality.

She’s incredibly kind and generous, and she gets along with people so well. I just knew that she’d be a fun addition to the group because my mom was coming along. I thought why we don’t travel together, fly together and yeah. Extend our trip a little bit so that I can decompress after hosting. This is something that I’ve learned after Years of hosting in person events.

I have an on ramp of energy and excitement and, prep, getting things ready, getting things put together, finalizing details. The actual retreat or trip is a combination of hosting and relaxing most of the day. Big work has been done at that point. So, while I can let things flow, I also am managing dynamics and if things go wrong, I’m there to fix them behind the scenes and try to help with stuff.

And so, I’m on as a host. By the time the retreat is over, the trip is over. I need some time to have an off ramp. There were a couple of retreats years ago where I would, finish the retreat, pack up, fly home, and then Get my kids to school in the morning, and it didn’t feel good. It was just a little too much for my body to go straight from all the details and logistics and management of a retreat straight back into the work of daily life.

And so, I’ve started scheduling myself some space, whether I spend a couple extra days in the area where I am or at the venue or come home and, don’t have any plans for the next day or two after I get home. I usually schedule myself a massage. I give myself the space to decompress and reflect and postmortem the trip and everything because Turkey is so close to Greece, and I had never been to Greece.

I asked my mom if she knew. Wanted to spend a couple extra days with me after the group trip that if we could go back to Greece and spend a couple days on some Greek islands to relax in the sunshine and just off ramp from the retreat. And of course, she agreed. She was super excited about that.

She has spent time in Greece, but we chose to go to a couple islands that she hadn’t been to before. And. That ended up being a wonderful decision. I had 14 women, including my mom, registered to travel for a week with me. in Istanbul and Cappadocia. I had advertised the trip through this podcast, on my Instagram feed, and through my newsletter, and everyone who came was really excited about it.

We did several, I’m going to say four or five, group Zoom calls ahead of the trip, which helped foster a group dynamic where we all had gotten to know at least someone else. Everyone couldn’t come to every single call, but everyone got a chance to meet someone else, learn someone’s name, hear a little bit about someone’s history.

We were coming from all over the United States, Canada, and Australia. And then we also had a local guide who. Became part of our group for the time that we spent in Turkey. I decided to fly with my mom round trip to Athens, Greece, and then book a shorter flight, the Athens to Istanbul and back on Turkish airways, which was, an easy, cheaper flight.

And it worked out better economically. Financially to do it that way, both the combination of both flights was cheaper than going all the way to Istanbul and gave us the chance to spend that extra time in Greece, which we wanted to do. So, we flew into Athens, and we spent one day there, which felt like the perfect amount of time.

One Day in Athens

The Acropolis

We wandered through a kind of cool arts district, which was nearby where our hotel was. The next day we got up early and spent the morning at the Acropolis, which all the. Guides and blogs and everything say to get there as early as possible because it becomes overrun by people, which we started when it opened, we got in line about 9 30 with a guided tour and spent about three hours there and for sure it was full of people the whole time, even from the moments we entered the gates where it was full of people.

I loved doing a guided tour. We just found someone on get your guide. Right there in Athens. We booked it the day before. It was nice to have a guide telling us about the history. She told us about the symbolism and explained the dynamics of rulers and worship and things like that, that we wouldn’t have known.

And that I didn’t, put the time into preparing ahead of time. It was hot, sunny. Beautiful outside, but also hot. So, we drank a ton of water and enjoyed that morning wandering around the Acropolis. And then I had just marked a few places on my Google map for exploring the rest of the afternoon.

Lufkades and Falafellas

We wandered down through a cool neighborhood right underneath the Acropolis and then found Lufkades, which is a donut place. These small doughnut holes and they can fill them, they cover them with different types of sugars and glazes and things, and it was delicious. We went to a little open window called Falafelas in Athens, and it’s like an open window street food place, so there’s nowhere to sit in there, which ended up being a little tricky because we got our falafels and then wandered down the street and there wasn’t, anywhere to sit to eat for a little while.

I will say right across the street from Falafella’s, I don’t have the name of it, but there was a cool ribbon trim store. It was like a trim store, a ribbon store, and we found some beautiful tapestry trims. I found one that’s neon yellow with eyes on it and some beautiful, White, and blue different trims.

If you end up in Athens and you go to Falafel, as you’ll know, right across the alleyway, the street right there, you can go to the trim store and get some trim. We also had some good ice cream We went to the Soul and Matter gallery, which is nestled up in the alleys. I felt like Athens the main kind of walking tourist area that’s below the Acropolis With the major market square and everything was close together.

It was walkable. And we also after we had done the Acropolis and wandered around, we ended up going back to the Acropolis Museum, which was beautiful. And there’s a reading room there on the second floor where It’s air conditioned. There are comfortable chairs. There’s a bunch of like books.

It’s really like a library kind of reading room. It has a good view down into the galleries, but you can also take a break there. So we went into the museum, used the restroom, saw some of the exhibits, but also, we’re just tired from walking around and our hotel was across town. And so, we just went I sat down and relaxed in some chairs.

I pulled a book about Greece from the shelf and just was browsing. My mom took a little nap. That was a nice place to take a break. And after, midway through the day, we felt like, because we weren’t in the mood for shopping, we weren’t looking for anything specific. We maybe had run out of things to do.

I hadn’t done a lot of looking for specific things in Athens. We had done the major things that we wanted to do. We flew out that evening feeling like we had done what we needed to do in Athens. We didn’t feel like we left a whole lot hanging there, which was nice.

First Impression of Istanbul

My first impression of Istanbul was fantastic. We had arranged for a car to pick us up from the hotel. I’ve heard. I never took a taxi in Istanbul.  We always prearranged cars. I’d heard some different things about Ubers and taxis in Turkey. And so, in Greece and Athens, we took Ubers around the city. But in Turkey, we had decided to just prearrange cars.

So, we had the hotel pick us up. It was about a 45-minute drive to Istanbul. The hotel and the car that picked us up was this kind of limo van. It had led lights. It looked like stars and runner lights that were different colors. And we commented on how nice this car was. And the driver rolled up the window between the driver and the back.

And it was a TV and he tossed back a remote control and said, you can watch YouTube while we go on the drive. It’s about 45 minutes or so. To the hotel, to the main part of town. And we watched this beautiful, silent YouTube video. Made in Uzbekistan. That was just like a farmer couple, just like harvesting peaches and plums and canning them.

And this is great. We were tired after a long day, so it was a perfect way to be transported to the hotel. We got to the hotel, went up to our room, which they had a for some reason upgraded our night stay that night to the top floor, which was how to wrap around balcony, and we got up. It was probably 10 30 at night.

We got up to the room. It was a big room with this big giant balcony and windows all around the room was a corner room. And we walked out and just the whole city, the Galata tower was right in front of us. We could see spires from mosques all over the city. Everything was lit up on one side. We could peek over and see the Bosphorus.

It was so beautiful. And we just, there, it was a Turkish flag, like flying right in front of us. There were lots of Turkish flags everywhere, but one kind of right in the viewpoint. Both works enamored like this already. We’ve been here for five minutes and it has such good energy We were excited for the official trip to begin the next day.

Quick Overview of Turkey

I want to give you just a quick overview of Turkey in case you don’t know much about it Before I move on to giving you a play by play of our itinerary so Turkey is located on the farthest eastern edge of Europe and Like I said, it spans into Asia You It’s bordered on the west by Greece and Bulgaria, the Black Sea is above Turkey, to the north of Turkey, and on the other side of the Black Sea, you have Romania, Moldova, and Ukraine, and Russia, and then coming back down around like a clock, you have Georgia, on the Eastern edge, Turkey is bordering Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Iraq, and on the southern border, Syria.

It’s a big country. The, most of the northern coast is coastal with the Black Sea, Istanbul is in the western part of the country, right along the connector, the Bosphorus, which is a waterway that connects the Black Sea to the Sea of Marmara. And if you follow the Sea of Marmara down, you end up in the Mediterranean.

Because of its prime location near all these waterways, it’s been inhabited for thousands of years with some of the earliest known settlements dating back 12, 000 years. The region was known historically as Anatolia and it was one of the cradles of ancient civilization, including the Hittites and the Lydians.

Anciently, Istanbul was known as Byzantium, which was founded by Greek settlers. 600 years B. C. It grew as a trading hub because of all these waterways that, you know, and it was straddling. Europe and Asia, and it also became a prominent city in the Roman Empire. You may have heard of Constantinople.

Emperor Constantine the Great decided to move the capital from Rome to Byzantium and called it Constantinople after himself. It became the capital. an important city in the Byzantine Empire, continuing the Roman Empire through the east. Now, when Constantinople was in power, it was a Christian hub, a hub of art and science and trade and Christian culture.

In 1453, the Ottomans lost the city. Conquered Constantinople and the city of Istanbul, what we now call Istanbul in Greek means the city. Istanbul is a word derived from a Greek phrase, estinpolen, which refers to the city. So, Constantinople had been such a big hub, such a central part of this part of the world in this empire that the Ottomans, when they conquered Constantinople, just called the city, like capital TC, Istanbul, just means the city.

Even though that conquest, the Ottoman Empire, conquering Constantinople happened in 1400s, it wasn’t until 1923 that You know, after the Republic of Turkey was established, that the city name officially became Istanbul. So, between the 1400s and 1900s, it was officially still Constantinople, even though it was known widely as Istanbul because people just called it the city.

The Ottoman conqueror was known as Sultan Mehmed, and he captured Constantinople, and this became the rise of the Ottoman Empire, changing the religious affiliation of the city dramatically, where it had been a hub of Christian culture, now became a Muslim city, with grand mosques and these bustling markets.

This is the era when you start to see the Hagia Sophia, the Tokapi Palace, and the Blue Mosque being built. In the 15th, 16th, 17th centuries, the Ottoman Empire slowly starts to decline, eventually collapsing after World War One. At this time in the 1920s, the Republic of Turkey is founded. The leader moves the capital from Istanbul to Ankara, but Istanbul remained the capital.

And remains the country’s cultural and economic center. Istanbul is also one of the largest cities in the world. It has a population of around 15 to 16 million people. It’s comparable to Delhi, India, Shanghai, China, and Tokyo, Japan. And larger than London and New York City. It also is one of the largest cities by size geographic size in the world, covering over 5, 000 square kilometers.

This is something that you really get a feel for when you go on a boat ride on the Bosphorus. I’ll tell you more about that in a second, because you’re on a boat for an hour and along the shoreline, the entire way is city, the city is massive, ancient, and dynamic are the three words that I tell you to think about Istanbul.

One of the landmarks that we saw, the Hagia Sophia was built as a Christian cathedral in 537 CE by Emperor Justinian. It was the world’s largest cathedral for nearly a thousand years. It later became a mosque after the Ottoman conquest. And in 1935, it was a museum. But then recently, just in 2020, it was reconverted into a mosque.

The history of Some of the buildings and landmarks in this city are. Another fun fact about one of the places that we saw when we were in the city is the Grand Bazaar. It’s one of the oldest and largest covered markets in the world. It was established in the 1400s. It covers 61 streets and houses over 4, 000 shops.

It’s such an interesting feeling being in the Grand Bazaar because you expect like a bustling outdoor market, but it’s covered, covered passages. It’s like a giant indoor mall that covers 61 streets. It is fascinating. If you can’t tell from the excitement of my voice, I really loved Istanbul. So let me rewind.

Day 1: Bosphorus Cruise, Balat, Welcome

I got ahead of myself. I’m going to rewind a little bit and tell you about our first few days there. Just as we had gone to sleep in this room overlooking the incredible nightlights of the city, we woke up to an incredible daytime view and noticed the architecture, the terracotta roofs, the city is very hilly, so you can see the city move up before your eyes as it’s built on these hills.

It’s beautiful. We went up to the rooftop of our hotel. We stayed in the Hayes Hotel in Karaköy, which is a neighborhood near the river in Istanbul, and breakfast is included. The hotel and we sat down for breakfast, and they started bringing dishes to the table, and then they kept bringing dishes to the table.

There were little dishes of Olives, this, my favorite green olive dish had green olives and strawberries and microgreens all with this kind of olive oil, a little bit of herbs. And then there were freshly fried potato chips with herbs that we laughed the whole trip with the group that like potato chips are now breakfast food.

They brought us each a fresh omelette just to try. Whipped egg, and there were several dishes of cheese, different types of vegetables, there was a platter that just had sliced cucumber, tomato, and parsley, there was three or four different kinds of bread, including freshly fried scones, and it just goes on and on, there was honey that had this buffalo cream in the middle of it, just Unreal, mouthwatering, incredible spread.

This is our first meal in Istanbul, and we are just thinking, we have died and gone to heaven. We’re on the rooftop, overlooking the river, overlooking the city, eating, piles of delicious, fresh food, thinking, how is this the first time we’ve ever been here? And already, we can’t wait to return. That day was arrival day for the travelers, and I knew in advance all the different flight times, and there were cars arranged to pick everyone up from the airport.

And most of the travelers didn’t arrive until the evening, and so we had this day to explore. We first decided to go check out the riverside, and so we walked down to the river. It was just a few blocks down. I call it a river. The Bosphorus is a massive waterway. It’s like a canal that connects the Black Sea To the sea of Marmara and eventually the Mediterranean.

It’s a little odd because it looks like a lake or a big, like a big lake or big giant river, but it’s seawater. It’s not freshwater. I’ve heard that you can see dolphin pods sometimes out in the Bosphorus. We didn’t get the chance. I did a couple of boat rides. So, this is the first boat ride we hopped on.

We, we walked down to the river and. There were people, lots of ferries, because it’s, it connects two sections of the city, there are ferries that just go across to different parts of the city all day long. We didn’t want to go on a transportation ferry, we wanted to do like a river tour. And so, there are a few different boats where people were just holding signs.

It was like 10 euro to hop on a boat. They waited until they had a certain number of people, I think, and then we took off. And there wasn’t on the first Bosphorus cruise that we did, there was no commentary. We were just sitting on the top of a big ferry, and it drove Out, along one of the banks of the city and then hit a bridge.

It didn’t hit a bridge. It like got to beneath a bridge and then turned around and came back. We basically did a big giant circle to see different parts of the city. And there are incredible views and buildings and all sorts of things all along the way. I had my Google map open, and it was interesting because I could see based on.

The landmarks that were recorded on Google map what we were going past and learn a little bit about them. I served as our own tour guide. It was so beautiful. So many seagulls just pretty being out on the water. I love being out on the water anyway. And this is the first time that we got a little bit of a feel for how massive this city was because like I mentioned, we were on the water for an hour going in a big loop and there was not a break in the city.

The city was lining this whole area. We loved this boat ride, got off the boat, and decided to go explore an area of the city that I had found on Instagram called Balat. It’s just a neighborhood, it historically was an Armenian neighborhood, and the buildings are painted all sorts of different colorful hues.

Now, I will say that there are different parts of the city where the buildings are painted as well, but this region, this neighborhood for whatever reason has gotten a name for itself on social media. There’s a lot of cute, kitschy, funky combinations of things. There’s a colorful painted stairway.

There’s a specific spot where there’s a corner cafe with cute striped awnings and a little orange scooter parked in front. I’d seen a lot of this on Instagram. I’ve mentioned before when I plan trips, I love searching hashtags on Instagram to find out what people. On social media saying I find restaurants that way I find, fun pictures that way in advance of this trip to Istanbul.

I had started following five or six different influencers and travel companies in Istanbul and in Turkey to just get an overview feel for it. So, we knew that we wanted to go check it out because we hadn’t included a tour of the lot on the itinerary, the official itinerary. But there were there was lots of free time built in.

And so, it was something that we had discussed as a group that we may want to do during free time. We ended up being able to hop on a public bus, and it was about five minutes away by bus. One thing that is so interesting to note is that in most of the places that I’ve traveled over the world, there have been a lot of people who have spoken English.

For better or worse, English is taught widely throughout the world. I don’t expect people to speak English at all. It was surprising how few people. Did in Turkey, like zero understanding or speaking, which I kind of applaud, like way to not feel like you must accommodate English speaking travelers.

It was an interesting experience though, that even like looking for the right bus there, we stopped to ask a couple of people, and no one had any idea what we were talking about. We ended up using Google translate and that was helpful to be able to show someone the translation in Turkish. I guess the other thing I’ll say about this is that.

Turkish is not like French or Spanish that you can pretend to pronounce it, like the letters are different. It felt a little bit like trying to look at Asian characters and pretend that I could pronounce them. I, looking at the way Turkish words are spelled, I would not have the slightest idea how to begin expressing those sounds.

So, Google translate came in handy. It ended up being quite simple to once we knew where we were going to hop on the bus and get to this area. And I was really impressed with it was cute. There’s not a ton to see, but it’s cute enough and interesting enough to go spend an hour walking around seeing some of these beautiful buildings.

I got a lot of really great pictures of just different vignettes of the city that I’ve In some cases had for sure been orchestrated, but also it was fun to support the people who are, opening up their cafes and their boutiques and little kiosks in that area because they know that people are, tourists are starting to come there ends up being like a fun little micro economy in just this small neighborhood.

And it was beautiful. So, we realized that we could get there and back easily. We ended up being able to do that later in the trip because I had felt comfortable with the. transportation aspect of getting there. After that little adventure, we headed back to the hotel and took a break, rested a little bit, moved our luggage from the room that they had originally given us into the rooms that we were assigned as part of the group, which was different rooms.

My mom had her own room. I had my own room during the actual group trip. And so, we were moved our luggage and then prepared for our welcome dinner. I got a text from one friend. One traveler that her flight had been delayed, so she wasn’t going to get in as soon as she expected, and we were thinking maybe she was not even going to arrive until the next day, but at the last minute, someone was able to fix her flight, and she was able to come right at the end of dinner.

So, for dinner, we So I walked over to a restaurant, we had a private room up in the upstairs, it ended up being quite hot. I will just blanket say this for July in Turkey, it is hot and humid and sticky, so it was probably 90 degrees with high humidity. Scarves for everyone that we were going to need when we went into some of the mosques to cover our heads.

One of the other travelers, Jess, had been brilliant in her planning and knew she was going to bring a fan for herself. So, she just ordered lightweight fans for the whole group. So, this first welcome dinner, she passed around fans. Those fans became the MVP of the trip. I will absolutely be packing a fan.

Anywhere that I travel in the summer from now on, it was so handy to be able to just pull it out on a car ride or waiting in line for a museum or standing around, learning about the history of a monument to be able to just create a little bit of airflow became so helpful. And if you’ve seen any of the pictures I posted on Instagram about the trip, I have a whole highlight about the trip and a bunch of pictures.

In many of those, we’re using our fans. So, thank you, Jess, officially for those fans. They were helpful. This first dinner was a cultural experience. The A. C. in the room was broken. The food was, Okay, it wasn’t my favorite. It was my least favorite meal of the whole trip, and I had some fantastic meals So it’s not that it was terrible.

It just wasn’t what I expected, and the restaurant had great reviews, but I think the combination of people being tired It was a big group and so sometimes it’s trickier for a restaurant to you know Serve a big group all at once the AC in the room was broken. So, people were uncomfortable I think everyone was a little bit tired from traveling too I had the benefit of already Being in Europe for a couple of days, but everyone else had just come in, so we did it.

It was we ended up laughing about some aspects of that meal for the rest of the trip. It was a bonding experience, and everyone went back and went to bed and got ready for our first big day exploring Istanbul.

Day 2 Exploring Sulthanhamet

This next day was our first big day group travel, everyone together, and we did some of the heavy hitters in Istanbul, in the historic area of the city, what’s called the Sultanahmet area.

You have the Hagia Sophia that I mentioned earlier in the show was built in Istanbul. 500 B. C. You have the Basilica Cistern, which is an underground water holder basically for water that was used during the Roman Empire. You have the Blue Mosque and the Grand Bazaar and the Hippodrome and the Just so many incredible historic things that are all close together, the Hagia Sophia and the Blue Mosque look at each other like the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument look at each other with kind of a little stretch of walkway in between.

We had woken up, had that incredible rooftop breakfast all together at the hotel, and then we got on a little above ground subway. That took us straight to the center. It’s about three stops from our hotel to the center to the Sultanahmet where we got off and started to explore. Each of these venues requires an entrance ticket and we had our local guide Mel, who I had met the first day of the trip, and she was fantastic.

She was, she’s in her 30s, a professional tour guide, Turkish, she grew up in Istanbul and us, she just Was absorbed into our group. She was a wonderful addition to the group. She was able to go, she had all our tickets for us. So, she managed the on the ground logistics of having our tickets for us, telling us when it was time to get in line.

We took a bunch of pictures and then wandered through and learned about the history of each of these buildings in turn the Hagia Sophia. And you could see inside the Hagia Sophia where it had originally been painted with Christian Hagia Sophia paintings of the Virgin Mary and of Christ and of angels.

And in Muslim culture, you don’t use idols. There’s no faces of idols. And so, in some cases, the angels had been painted over and in some, the murals had just been covered by cloth. So, you could see behind the cloth. From an angle where there was this big Christian mural, but if you are worshiping Hagia Sophia is a mosque in use by Muslims in the city.

If you’re on the carpet doing your prayers and attending the mosque, if you look up, then all those idol’s images are covered. This is so fascinating to see all at once, active. Muslims in worshiping on the ground doing their prayers and the historic Christian paintings that have been preserved still on the walls of this ancient building.

In both the Hagia Sophia and the Blue Mosque, both of which are functioning mosques, we had to have our knees, our shoulders, and our heads covered. And if you didn’t, then they would provide coverings for you, as you walked in. The Basilica Cistern Was a refreshing place to visit in between these other buildings because it’s underground and it’s filled with water.

So, the water right now for visitors is probably about a foot and a half deep, maybe a foot deep, and there are giant marble columns that hold up this whole area. It’s a cave dug out of the ground. And at one point, it was filled to the top with water. So right now, there’s walkways where you’re above the water and you can see down to the bottom and you can see, there’s lights.

At the time we were there, there were Pieces of art statues that had been erected in and among the columns. There was, it was an art exhibit beautiful, interesting, damp and a little bit cooler. A lot cooler than the outside air, but cooler than expected. And you wander on the walkways and can see this water storage tank, which provided the city and the palace water in case of attack during times when the city may have been under siege.

Despite everything being close together, it was a lot of walking, and so by the time we were ready for lunch, it was later in the day, we had wandered and seen so much, we decided to sit at an outdoor cafe and have a quiet lunch. Lunch kind of a lounge lingering lunch, which was nice. And then we headed back to the hotel, and everyone took a break.

It was free time for the rest of the afternoon after a cold shower and a change of clothes. I told a group that I would be happy to show them how to do the Bosphorus cruise, which I had just done the day before, but loved it. And so, one group went and. Visited a different part of town with the guide Mel and then another group came with me, and we went down and caught a different cruise and sat on the edge.

And this time we got on the boat probably at 6 or 6 30 at night. And by the time we were circling and just amazed and, same beautiful experience of seeing this giant city. It was dusk and the sun was starting to set, and the lights were starting to come on and we would hear the call to prayer from the mosques as we were riding by them, watching the seagulls dive for crackers and bread that people were throwing off the edge of the boat.

It was a beautiful experience and just felt otherworldly to be. With this group of women who we had been anticipating this experience for months, finally be there and be together and be doing it, it felt so good. We hopped off the boat and there was a night market out with lots of different food.

The thing that caught our eye were these It’s awesome little freshly fried doughnuts that were drip, dripping with honey. We grabbed some doughnuts. They were just small doughnuts, and I grabbed a cup of them and passed them around and that was our final little bite of the night, which was delicious because of the length of this show so far.

Pause until next week…

I’m just loving telling you about my trip. So, I’m going to pause here and I’m going to give you the second half next week. I will make sure that the full itinerary of what we did in Istanbul and Cappadocia is shared along with that episode where you’re able to see kind of day by day. If you’re thinking of planning a trip yourself or you just want to see some of the highlights, I’ll make sure that is there.

Prepared for next week. The regular show notes will just, transcript will be available as usual I hope that you’re enjoying coming along as I relive the magic of this epic summer trip As I wrap up this first half of this epic trip episode I wanted to make sure that you’re aware of a couple upcoming experiences that I have available right now if you’re Listening along, thinking, gosh, how cool to go explore somewhere and be with people and try new things.

Two upcoming retreats: 

Renewal Retreat October 9-13 Southern Utah

I have two chances in the next six months that you’ll get to do that. It won’t be in Turkey, but the first one is coming up just in a month and a half in October. I’m going to be gathering with a group of women in Southern Utah and exploring Zion national park, snow Canyon, going on an incredible waterfall hike.

And along with that, we’re going to be doing some daily discussions and learning. About how to take better care of ourselves as women. This is called the renewal retreat. It’s a place to come together with like-minded, open-hearted women to come together and take care of us, to learn about ourselves, to reconnect to ourselves, to find connection with each other.

We’re going to do some creative activities, some outdoor activities and eat delicious food, of course, and just be in. In community, there are just a couple of spots left for that. And so, I would love for you to come join it. Even if you live nearby, if you live in Utah, if you’ve been down to Southern Utah, if you haven’t done it by yourself or with a group of women, if you’ve done it with your kids or you’ve done it where you’re in charge, come, let me take care of you and plan things for you and take the stress and logistics of a vacation away so that you can just be present and experience it yourself.

Thailand Fitness & Wellness Week February 22-29, 2025

The second. Adventure that we have planned is a fitness and wellness retreat to Thailand coming up in February. This is a co ed retreat that I’m hosting together with my husband, Dave, and it is all of the wonderful parts of a cultural experience in Thailand, including sea kayaking and snorkeling in the An Thong National Park, hiking to Bottle Beach, doing a Thai cooking class, having free time to explore Koh Samui and Koh Phangan, eating incredible Thai food, being with a group of amazing people, all of that, and daily group exercise that’s programmed for you.

So, you can come and stay on your routine and stay on your programming and not have to skip it because you’re on vacation, as well as daily recovery sessions. Now, if you are not interested in the fitness and wellness piece. You can come and just do the Thai trip. It’ll be amazing. And for those of you who like to exercise when you’re on vacation, you like to just have a little bit of movement as an option.

It’s going to be the perfect combination of an active trip. The registration is available now for that will be in the show notes. This Thai trip, I’m calling it a fitcation, is Coeds, you can come with your spouse or partner, you can come with a friend, you can come by yourself and make friends. I’m really excited about it, and I hope that some of you will be there to join me.

The sooner you sign up, the better. There’s a 200 discount for the next 6 people who register. Also, the sooner that you register for a trip like this, the better. The more time you must anticipate it, experience all the positive emotion that comes with having something fun to look forward to and learning about it.

We’re also going to do some group calls like I did for this turkey trip where we’re able to get to know each other as a group before we land in Thailand, so we have a chance to build some rapport and hit the ground running as a group. Both the Renewal Retreat in Southern Utah and The Thai trip will be available as links for registration in the show notes of this show.

Please check them out. Let me know if you have any questions, but I would love to take you along on my next trip. That’s all for this episode. I’m going to tune in again next week with the second half of my Turkey and Greece trip. I hope that you are enjoying, and we’ll come back for more.