Flying into Manchester from Athens, the first thing that struck me about England was just how lusciously green everything was. Yes, I've been to England before, I even lived there for nearly a year some time ago, but I was still blown away by it. No other country I've been to has rolling fields and hills like England.

Leaving Turkey I took a ferry from Selçuk to Samos, the main gateway into the Greek Islands from Turkey. I'd planned on heading straight from there to Ikaria but the ferry to Ikaria didn't run the same day so I stopped on Samos for a day and had a look around. I found a cafe with wifi and looked up some cheap hotels, then made the long walk to one of the nicer looking ones which turned out was even cheaper than the prices I'd seen online because it was low season.

After Istanbul our next stop was in Göreme, where Amanda, Luke, and I, stayed in a fairy chimney hotel. These were rock formation that had been eroded away into conical shapes, that had rooms carved into them, with some brickwork to divide up the space.

After flying into Istanbul Attaturk airport we spent the morning hiding out at the airport in the air conditioning and waiting for the time we'd agree to meet at our apartment with our AirBNB host. We got a taxi from the airport and my first impressions of Istanbul proper were that everything appeared so clean, modern and organised. The highways were multi-lane, there was nobody wandering out trying to sell things to passing traffic, traffic flowed very quickly and efficiently, people drove on the correct side of the road and actually stayed in their lanes for the most part. It's amazing how much your direct prior experiences can colour your perceptions of a place, the Turkey we were seeing was at odds to the reputation that the place generally has for it's drivers.

The apartment we stayed in was located very close to Taksim Square, consisting of the whole top floor of the building and a rooftop courtyard and a fantastic view of the Bosporus. Having modern conveniences like a fridge, a washing machine and air conditioning felt very luxurious after having just spent 5 weeks camping in tents.

It's 2014 and you'll probably notice things look quite a bit different. I've done what any good procrastinator would do when faced with little to no internet and a lot of time to spare; I've completely revamped my blog so it's nicer to work with when I dont have internet, and have a copy that works without relying on the existance of tumblr. (Sorry Amanda, I bet you thought I was going to actually have written a post about Turkey at last :P)

Anyhow, comments from the old site should migrate over in the next 24 hours. Let me know if you notice anything that looks broken.