The beauty of technology is that plans can be made somewhat last minute very easily. I waited until we got to Tuscany to get winery suggestions because I figured the locals could give better recommendations than random online searches. This meant with a handy iTouch and wifi in every hotel, we could make plans up to the last minute. We found the perfect vineyard to visit in Montalcino. Stopped in Montepuciano for a memorable cappuccino (oh the coffee! one of the main things I miss from Spain and Italy!). Headed over to Cortona to soak in the inspiration for Under the Tuscan. A bit cliché, but it is shamelessly one of my favorite flicks. We had rented a car, and my poor, good-sport dad humored my mom and I by driving up and down this curvy, one-lane wide hillside, in a stick-shift car, looking for the house used in the movie. Sadly after several turn-arounds and ups-and-downs we agreed to abandon the mission as it felt like the price of expiring patience wasn’t the price to pay for a quick glimpse at a house. Tourist-laden it may be, but there’s something magical about Tuscany. Something that connects culture and nature. Hearty work with pristine art. Knowledge revolution with an almost moral commitment to enjoying la dolce vita. Traditional cuisine with a passion hard to fully absorb without actually being Tuscan.

You know it’s good bread when it comes just stacked in bins.

A dip down to Siena with my parents was next on the agenda. It was a three day stay that was a much needed time to sit and pause. To breathe a little. Thankfully our little bed and breakfast on the outskirts had a backyard a tables and chairs and great view of Tuscan hills. The place was quaint and cozy and had the perfectly sweet mannered owner who was so fun to get to know.

Our awesome breakfast at the bed and breakfast.

Siena Cathedral. The striped tower intrigued me, especially since the stripe spacing gradated (not a good depiction here).

Full red moon one night.

I studied for one month in Florence in college. It was my first time to Europe and I remember the giddy emotions I had before embarking. I just kept thinking, “This is real. There is a place across the world where I will land in a plane tomorrow and it is real! It’s not just in books or on websites! I will be right in the middle of those things I’ve seen in pictures.” Indeed it was an incredibly formative summer and I think time abroad should be a near-requirement for all college students. We didn’t stay long there with my parents but I did at least want them to see the things that meant so much to me that summer: our apartment, where we would sketch with our class, where we got gelato, where we had the best blueberry steak in the world, even down to the exact same Simon and Garfunkel cover band that played in the piazza.

After Turkey, I flew to meet my parents in Rome for their first trip to Europe. We had a blast! It was also the first time I had ever repeat-visited a city in Europe (aside from those around us in Spain). It was interesting to see it differently on a second voyage. I mean, it’s Rome. Not sure there is much new I can add to the conversation that other people haven’t said better. So for now I’ll just stick to pictures.

This is the street with our apartment. This was also the first time I had used a rent-by-owner apartment site. The one we found was perfect! Cheap, convenient and with the cutest, peppiest owner. When we came wandering down the street with luggage, there she was in the top window, calling to us with a “Yoohoo! Just come to the top floor!” She then gave us her own run down of things to do. You can’t beat getting a true Roman to tell you about their own city.

Arch of Constantine, built to commemorate the legalization of Christianity by Emperor Constantine.

Piazza Navona

St. Peter’s Basilica

Peter and Paul’s jail cell (where it is traditionally said that they were, though not at the same time).

After the our lovely brunch and riding around Istanbul (again, I thought I had seen my last day every time we entered that traffic), we got on a ferry for Big Island. I think the ferries were definitely one of my favorite parts of the city—you’re in this booming metropolis, yet boat travel is normal and convenient. There are several islands in the Bosporus that are a quick boat ride away and common vacation spots.

There are no cars on the island, making the only mode of transportation horses and carriages, which we gladly rented to take us up the mountain! It was a little lopsided, but a fun adventure.

It was hard to get any good photos because of the moving carriage and rain, but one some-what example of the architecture of all of the gorgeous vacation homes on the island. We stopped for a tea at this restaurant halfway up the hill to the top of the island. From there we could watch the boats out in the water waiting their turn to go through the straight.

We then walked up a really long hill to get to a restaurant at the top and to soak in almost tear-bringing beautiful view, with complete, absolute silence. A perfect respite from the throbbing energy of the city.

Armenian Christians used to live on the island (I guess still do) and built this lovely church.

I think if I could choose any vacation home in the world, this would rank very highly! On the other side of the island from Istanbul, where I honestly have not clue how they got to it. There had be roads, but none were visible from the top. You have a city of 15 million a 30 minute boat ride away, and then you could be here without anything but the sea in sight.

Our dinner of kebab and the typical Turkish salad that is so delicious: tomatoes, onions, parsley, oil and vinegar.

After a nice day of seclusion, quietness, nature, sunset, and a car-free island, we returned to the bottom to catch the ferry back and found that globalization reaches to even these far corners:

I was really grateful to be in Istanbul with a friend because we stayed with her cousin and the cousin’s husband. They lived on the Asian side of Istanbul. A lot of tourists don’t make it over to the other side of the bridge because most of the sights are on the European side of Istanbul. We ferried across after some sightseeing, then caught this insanely crazy mini-bus. They have these little van-like buses where you stand and they have a set route, but no set stops. It’s really convenient, but you are constantly stopping as people flag it down and request stops to get off. They accelerate super intensely from stop to stop and weave in and out of traffic. I said a pre-death prayer or two. Thankfully we arrived safely in an insane frenetic mixture of people going every which way. There were some elections coming up so there were campaigners and people singing in groups in all of the public spaces.

This is the bridge that crosses the Bosporus: Europe on the left, Asia on the right. Incredible.

We ate brunch at this incredible restaurant on the Bosporus with a great view of the water and city. The spread of food options was phenomenal. They even had a huge chunk of honeycomb you could slice off with a wire.

Istanbul was once Constantinople, the capital of the Byzantine Empire and where emperor Constantine legalized Christianity. The Hagia Sophia is a marvelous basilica. It was the largest in the world for almost 1,000 years. It was built between 532 and 537, but in 1453 was converted to a mosque. In 1935 Ataturk declared it a national museum where one can now see the layers of Christian and Islamic art. Like many things in European sights, it was amazing to finally see something I had only learned about in books in art history. The dome of the church with its flooding streams of light left such an impression on me from just the photo in my textbook. To see it first hand was such a completion of appreciation. It indeed, as my old textbook claimed, appeared that the dome was floating on top of the church because of all of the windows. This structure made it a revolutionary work of architecture.

I wanted to so much to know how to cook with all of this!

Buket was making fun of me for taking so many pictures of the markets because it’s just food. But for me, it was so much of what I had imagined in my head about Turkey.

I thought this little man was so interesting selling his paintings:

One of my favorite things about going to Istanbul was that we took a ferry there! It was such a dramatic entrance to the city bustling with 15 million people. It was beautiful to approach it from this wide panoramic view and just get closer and closer to it. We took it because it was actually the most practical way, as the boat is faster from Bursa to Istanbul than road travel. I think the birds circling overhead made it all the more exotic with their calls going out over the city combined with the calls to prayer weaving sound bites over the city. The city was overwhelming, but in a good way. Absolute sensory overload. Being with a Turkish person , however, made it manageable and navigable.

I don’t know why, but I absolutely found this building intriguing. The architecture in Turkey was not at all what I was expecting. The endless streets of apartment buildings were, but this more wooden, craftsman style home was not what I anticipated to be typical Turkish.

We started out sight-seeing at the Sultan Ahmen, the main mosque in Istanbul. Because in Islamic art it is forbidden to make images of humans, they have developed intricate, breathtakingly beautiful tile pattern designs. The entire place looked like one seamless quilt design.

And just as Rome has its street photo-poser gladiators, this area comes with its own Sultan photo-posers. I had to work hard to discreetly take this photo because I thought it was hilarious.

We stopped for a delicious kebab lunch to re-energize and at this fantastic, subtly sweet dessert made with semolina wheat and maybe some sugar water ahd honey(?). They just make a huge chunk of it and cut off portions:

Buket took me to the main mosque in the center of Bursa. This was my first time in a predominantly Muslim country so many of the routines and traditions were interesting and fun to see since it is so foreign to my own culture. The call to prayer goes out over the city five times a day and is quite a site to watch people mobilize to head to their mosque and pray and go through the washing ritual in the fountains outside before entering. The whole thing is carpeted so when you enter, they give you a little plastic bag for your shoes. The patterns of carpet and tiles reflected amazing craftsmanship.

The main mosques are used to tourists so before you can go in, they provide you with a skirt to cover your legs, and a scarf to cover your hair and shoulders. Ergo, we look like weirdos:

We went to Bursa’s famous silk market and then stopped in its plaza for a taste of super strong Turkish coffee. I just thought espresso was strong.

Cool little hipster coffee shop in the city center. As a friend recently commented about a different scenario, but still applies here, “It felt like you put on Instagram lenses when you walked in.”

Wow, look at this type! Not sure what it says, but I think it might be a monument Ataturk (Mustafa Kemal), the man to lead Turkey into modernity by defeating the Ottomans and declaring it a republic. He even made them all switch from writing in their traditional script to the Roman letters we use. I can’t imagine the response Americans would have if we were all of a sudden made to adopt a new alphabet by mandate. But they did, and have fully made their way into the modern world of commerce and industry. A great book about modern Turkish history is Birds Without Wings if you’re looking for a savory novel.

Seafood district in Bursa:

Awesome market in the city center:

The vendors were nice and let me sample stuff. There were foods I had never tried nor seen. Below are some dates (I guess we have them in America, but I’ve never eaten a fresh one not in a fruit cake or something).

I’ve sung a song about going around the mulberry bush since I was a child, but I’ve never actually seen one. They were tasty little things, kind of like a raspberry, only softer, sweeter, and a lighter taste.

There were artichoke hearts floating in parsley water at many of the stands. And super cheap! They looked delicious.

Buket’s favorite kebab restaurant with their unique style kebabs: