I went on a trip to Turkey from April 8^th to 17^th with my husband.

At first, I was worried about my health because the flight time was 13 hours and I flew economy class. Actually, I watched 5 movies on board and took a few naps, so 13 hours passed very quickly.

At Istanbul Airport, we met a guide who was Turkish and spoke Japanese very well. Our group was 19 people, 9 couples and 5 singles. (Seven people took part in the tour from Nagoya.) They were all friendly and they often go on trips abroad, so we talked about ourselves and traveling.

All meals were included in the tour, and every meal was really tasty and had a lot of variety. One of the Turkish specialties was a mackerel sandwich. Most tourist don’t have a chance to eat it on the tour. But on my tour, we ate it for the second days dinner. We ate soup, salad, a mackerel sandwich, and dessert. It was enough for me. The mackerel wasn’t oily. There was also thinly sliced cabbage on a sandwich. We ate it with lemon. It was really tasty. I will probably make it at home.

We ate many kinds of cheese and olives at the breakfast buffet. I like cheese and olives so I was happy because it is rare to find many kinds of cheese and olive served at one time in Japan.

Pirav is a Turkish rice dish which is origin of pilaf. We often ate it during my tour. They cook rice with tiny pasta(rizzoni), which is about the size of long grain rice) and seasoned with salt and spices. It was really good with both meat and fish.

A special Turkish soup was made from beans, so it was thick and mild. But they were different from in any restaurant. A special Turkish drink was Airan which was a salty yogurt drink. It wasn’t sweet so it went well with meals. I drank it every day, so my stomach was good during my trip.

There were a lot of Mosques in Turkey. It seems like there is one mosque in each village. The guide said that mosques are like temples in Japan. We visited 3 mosques; all of the mosques were old and gorgeous. At each mosque, I wore a scarf and took off my shoes, then looked around for about 1 hour. Muslims washed their hands and feet before they entered mosques. There were a lot of washing places by the mosques. But one of the mosques had no such places so they washed their hands and feet in the restroom. So, it was crowded and the floor was wet.

We went to see a lot of world heritage sites. In Istanbul everywhere is a world heritages sites- mosques, the Grand Bazar, Topkapi Palace, and the Underground Palace, which wasn’t a castle, but an underground reservoir. It seemed like castle because a lot of marble was used and pillars were gorgeous. A long time ago, it was used for the palace of Constantinople. It was really beautiful, cool and exotic.

I went to many sightseeing places and enjoyed Bosphorus Strait cruise. From the strait we saw a lot of wonderful buildings. It was really interesting because one side was Europe and another side was Asia, we could tell by the buildings on either side.

The most interesting place was Cappadocia. It is known for its rock formation. On the rocks we could see pictures of Jesus Christ. And we could see rock in the shapes of a camel, three sisters, and mushrooms.

We stayed at a cave hotel for 2 days. It was really comfortable. The rooms were all different types because they were built into natural rock. In my room, there was a big jacuzzi. We relaxed in the bath comfortably.

Early one morning, we were supposed to go on a hot-air-balloon ride, but unfortunately it was snowy and we couldn’t go on the hot-air-balloon ride. They said, it was the first time to see snow at this time of year. I was really looking forward to riding in a hot-air-balloon so I was sad. But I was lucky to visit a Turkish family house and had a tea and talked a lot with them.

Second was Pamukkale where was a hot spring resort in southwestern Turkey characterized by white lime terraces.

During the daytime, the limestone was blue and at sunset it was red. We enjoyed walking on the limestone terrace and putting feet in the hot spring.

Third was the Silk Road. We took a bus from Ankara to Cappadocia for 6 hours. It was a long, straight drive and we could see a beautiful scenery through the window.

Fourth was Lake Tuz which is a salt lake. It is also called Blue Mirror Lake because in summer time it is all white water and the blue sky reflects on the lake. When we were there, there was no water, only salt, and we walked on the salt.

There are many more places I would like to talk about but I’ll stop here.

The thing I will remember most about this trip is that the Turkish people were all very friendly to us.

We wanted to go to Turkey for over 30 years and we finally did it.

I am a lucky woman. I’m thankful for everything.