hindi hindi gobble gobble

hey guys,

i am writing today from sophia in bulgaria. it's a cute little city about the same size as perth but at the bottom of a mountain. i am going up the mountain tomorrow. i left istanbul yesterday. the tour had finished a couple of days before but i spent an extra couple of days wandering the bazaars and all the little antique shops. i can't wait til next year when i'm a millionaire and i can come back to turkey and do a big road trip around the whole lot and then buy my antique mother of pearl binoculars and a 50,000 euro silk carpet that will probably look dumb in my house so it will live with mum and lots of handmade turkish pottery that is only like 300 euro for a plate or 500 euro for a handbag wine bottle.

what the hell is kelly on about you ask. what the hell is a handbag wine bottle. well my friends, kelly is not insane...yet. although talking about yourself in third person is usually a good sign of up and coming maddness. but what i call a handbag wine bottle is a ceramic wine bottle that has a circle bit that you put your arm through and then you wear it on your shoulder to pour drinks. a nice step up from the old hip flask i reckon. i probably didn't explain it to well. i will try to get a photo of one up.

anyway, turkey was great. it is a beautiful country. istanbul is a very modern city and all nice and clean and big step back towards normality after the chaos of cairo. our tour was fairly small, there were 10 of us and 2 of them, saffa's ruth and miles, i already knew because they were on my egypt tour. coincidence, i think not.
the others on the tour were the usual influx of aussies and kiwis and a couple from bahrain which was pretty cool.

so the 10 of us, our tour guide gokhan (damn i kept forgetting to wear my dragon ball z tee when he was around) and out bus driver zekki set off. we went to gallipoli which was good to see but bloody freezing, but i didn't let that stop me from running about getting photos of myself hiding in trenches.

um, i couldn't be bothered writing the whole lot and you are probably getting bored by now, so i'll just do the highlights. gallipoli i already mentioned, the blue mosque was pretty impressive and the basilica cistern i liked. ephesus was good, it's old ruins but a lot of them have been restored and look really good, my favourite part is the public toilets. a long slab of marble with a number of holes in it and water flowing underneath to get rid of everything. some quality photo opportunities there. Hieropolis the necropolis was pretty cool too along with the calcium pools which are these hot springs flowing into these big white calcium cliffs and you can wander about through the water bare footed.

cappadocia was the big favourite though. it looks just like something out of star wars (probably because it was in the first (episode iv) star wars. all these big massive cliff and ravines and there are buildings cut into the cliffs everywhere. it looks like a big human ant hill, especially from the hot air balloon. the hot air balloon was awesome.

anyway, again i am promising photos. but really turkey was great and i would love to go back or have stayed longer, but there are other places to get to. so i am in bulgaria for probably 5 days and then probably belgrade or budapest or somewhere like that. i did want to go to romania, but you need to have a visa before you leave for that, so poo on that plan.

well, keep in touch kids.