Penny visited from mid-March until mid-April. I still had classes, though they were dwindling down as exams approached. The work I had to put into studying for finals as well as preparing projects for Washburn cut into the time Penny and I had to spend together, but I think we made the most of it and we were still able to travel quite a bit.
Our first trip was to Stuttgart, Germany, to visit an old friend of ours from our time in Bamberg. Right after my class on a Friday, we jumped in a taxi and headed to the car rental agency to pick up our Fiat. We spent about 4.5 hours driving to Stuttgart and got there about 9:00 at night. The next day we were shown the town on a nice long walk by our hosts. I didn't take many (or any since my camera wasn't charged) pictures because Stuttgart isn't really that pretty of a city as it was destroyed during WWII. Sunday we spent a couple hours at the Mercedes Benz museum, which was very interesting as it incorporated the story of what was happening in the world with the history of Mercedes. We left on Monday morning during a snow storm. Surprisingly, the closer we got to Maastricht, the nicer the weather became. All in all it was a nice trip and good to catch up with some old friends.
Before my exams Penny and I spent five days in London. It was cold, but we still managed to have a good time. We saw an Arsenal-Reading soccer match, toured the Victoria & Albert Museum and the Science Museum, attended Easter services at St. John at Hackney Church, and went to The Boat Race.
This was a tower in the park a block away from our hotel and right around the corner from St John at Hackney. It looked like Spring, but it sure didn't feel like it.
Emirates Stadium is the home of Arsenal, probably the premier team in London. They certainly showed they were in a different class than Reading, beating them 4-1. At one point the few Reading supporters there started chanting, "You're nothing special, we lose every week!" It was quite funny.
Here are the Cambridge and Oxford rowing teams. Oxford won, though we really only saw this little bit. The bank of the Thames, the entire length of the race, was covered by fans. There was plenty of drinking (in order to fit in with the British locals, we enjoyed some Pimm's) and eating. It would amaze me if there was ever this much interest in a Harvard-Yale athletic event in the US.
These next two shots are from the V&A Museum. It was a nice museum (and free!) that had just about everything. We didn't go to the special exhibit about David Bowie because it sold out within the first hour of being open.
Lastly is this plane from the Science Museum (yes, that is the museum's name). There was a real cool aviation exhibit where we spent most of our time.
After we returned to Maastricht from London, I got to studying for my exams which were scheduled for the following two days. After those were in the books, we jumped a train and headed to Utrecht for the night before flying out of Amsterdam to Turkey the next morning.
We spent the first two days in Istanbul, two days in Cappadocia, and then the final two days in Istanbul.
We had been to Istanbul a couple years ago, so we had already been to the major attractions (Blue Mosque, Hagia Sophia, Topkapi Palace, Grand Bazaar, the cistern, etc.). We hit up the Hagia Sophia and Blue Mosque again, as well as the Grand Bazaar and the Spice Market. We also went to Galata Tower, which provided great views of the city:
That is the Blue Mosque on the right and Hagia Sophia on the left.
The Grand Bazaar, as you might expect, has everything you might want - as long as it includes cloth, spices, rugs, and jewelry.
The classy way to smoke!
The Hagia Sophia is ~1500 years old and has served as both a church and a mosque. Today it is the most visited museum in Turkey. The building is massive and as you can see from the above photo, it dominates the Istanbul skyline.
The Hagia Sophia was under renovation when we last visited and that renovation was still ongoing. Information at the museum stated the work would continue for the foreseeable future.
The Blue Mosque is an active mosque, so there are times were entrance is closed for non-Muslims during prayer. Once inside, it is easy to see why it is named the Blue Mosque.
Women had to cover their hair, so Penny used this scarf she purchased in the market.
As mentioned, we also spent some time at the Spice Market, it smelled so good:
After a few days, we traveled to Cappadocia where we took a balloon ride and a private tour of the area. If you haven't heard, the landscape of Cappadocia has been described as other-worldly. The landscape was created by a mixture of volcanic eruptions and wind and rain erosion, leaving what are known as "fairy chimneys." The three most famous are these, which are used on the tourist office photos and are the official symbol of the area:
The story goes that the one in the back on the left is the father, the little one is a child, and the one on the right is the mother, with a little one in the oven.
As stated, we took a balloon ride, which is kind of a "when in Rome (Cappadocia)" thing. It was a bit cold that morning, but braving the temperatures was very worth it.
The ride was about an hour and we saw at least 50 other balloons in the air.
On our tour, we stopped by a government run carpet/rug producer where we learned about how silk was harvested and how local women were trained how to make carpets/rugs. It looked like a tedious process that is less about skill and more about attention to detail and just nugging away at it until completion. The women had geometric patterns they followed in order to know where to knot which color thread.
We also saw an open-air museum, which consisted of a cavee village and many churches carved into the rocks:
Caves have played an important part of the history of the area and in fact one of the main attractions are the cave hotels, one of which we stayed in. This was the door to our room:
Once back in Istanbul, we went to the old train station:
And the Archaeological Museum:
In all Penny spent just under four weeks over here and we were able to travel within five countries (Netherlands, UK, Belgium, Germany, and Turkey). Despite the weather not being the most conducive to travel, or really spending any time outside, we had a good time. I only wish it could have lasted longer.
Next time: Queen's/King's Day!
