Articles from this Category
19 October 2019
Interesting breakfast With a departure time with Khalid of 0800, I headed out for breakfast at 0715. It was drizzling. Not many places were open. Kebab would seem to be the popular breakfast perhaps in an hour’s time but right now, all I could find were some pastries. I ordered one of the large pastries […]
18 October 2019
Moving to Duhok Today I move to Duhok (also spelt as Dohuk). It is close to the Syrian and Turkish borders and at this time, Syrian refugees are streaming in to escape from Turkish attacks in Syria under the Spring Peace operation. The information provided by my NGO contacts suggest that Duhok is safe. After […]
17 October 2019
The plan for the day was to make a daytrip to Rawanduz from Erbil. The information available suggested that I take public transport in the form of shared taxis to Soran and then change to a private taxi. After breakfast, I headed out around 0830 to hail a taxi to the shared taxi station. I […]
16 October 2019
First taste of Erbil I wandered out after a leisurely breakfast for my first taste of Erbil. I found my way to the citadel area about 20 mins walk away. The route from my hotel was through areas selling unattractive things like hardware. Around the base of the citadel was the city’s main square and […]
15 October 2019
Preparing for Iraqi Kurdistan My flight to a new adventure starting in Erbil, Iraqi Kurdistan departs at 1835 this evening. I thought I could do a bit of sightseeing this morning. But this is a familiar city and I’d just be largely repeating myself. And I have two late night departures coming in the next […]
14 October 2019
Exploring Asia In my various stays in Istanbul, I’ve never explored the Asian shores, except for getting to Sabiha Gokcen Airport (SAW). I’ve been close to the various parts on the ferries, but that’s it. Today, I thought I’d remedy that. I walked to the ferry terminal at Eminonu and found the pier for Kadikoy. […]
13 October 2019
Locating places Sightseeing wasn’t a priority today as I had been to Istanbul many times. I thought I’d locate a few places to smoothen the way for later: First up, I found the Eminonu bus stop for getting to the airport. While I expected it be directly across the multi-lane road from where I had […]
12 October 2019
Flying out of Suvarnabhumi My flight to Istanbul was scheduled for 0925. Istanbul is the gateway to my next adventure in Iraqi Kurdistan and then Sharm el Sheikh. I woke at 0545 and left the hotel at 0630 for Suvarnabhumi Airport. I had pessimistically allowed an hour’s ride on Grab to get to the airport, […]
29 June 2018
I thought I’d take Kim to Princes’ Islands today as it is a good and cheap way of seeing Istanbul from the water. We got on the public ferry around 0930 for a 1000 departure. It was vert busy on board with many Middle-Eastern tourists, some domestic tourists and a few foreigners. We called into […]
28 June 2018
Breakfast at the hotel was served on the rooftop overlooking the Golden Horn and the minaret of the mosque next door. Lovely! The plan for today to repeat for Kim, the sights we saw 26 years ago. I had repeated them in recent years and can easily show him the way there. And they’re all […]