Choosing Turkiye

At the beginning of our travels, I really wanted to stick to our budget and travel more “cheap”… not anymore! That slowly morphed into choosing what was comfortable and what made sense for us, over what the lowest-cost option was. Our time in Turkiye happened because of the “low-cost option mentality” for sure (which may have not made $$ sense in the end anyway).

We chose Turkiye because it had the cheapest flights over to South East Asia… and we thought it would be fun to train through Europe to get there. The train system ended up taking more time and money than we had thought, so we opted to fly to Istanbul from Rome instead of the train.

At the time we needed Visas which I had not looked into, and it ended up being kinda pricey, but since then they have taken away the need for travel visas for Canadian visitors (2024). With the cost of our flights, hotel stays for a week, visas, and an overnight layover in Oman through to Thailand- I’m not sure if it was any less than the more direct flight options from Italy, or the train options… but c’est la vie.

Highlights from Istanbul

I ended up being sick for part of our week in Istanbul- which is a journey in and of itself when you work online from home, homeschool, and travel full-time. I spent a lot of time in the sauna and steam room at our hotel (some of our favourite Airbnb have been condos with extra amenities like this). Being sick was a bummer for sure, and Istanbul was quite loud and busy (crazy traffic, and much more “aggressive” salespeople), but it was also really beautiful. We had an amazing view of the mosques downtown.

A few highlights from our week in Istanbul:

• Learning more about the Muslim faith… I honestly didn’t know much about it before going there (I didn’t even know Turkey was predominantly Muslim), but we took a little “tour” of one of the mosques and were able to ask loads of questions. I love learning about other faiths, especially learning about how many similarities there truly are between religion to religion… and how faith impacts an individual's life. I recommend visiting both the Blue Mosque and Hagia Sophia. 
• Connecting with LIVE people. We walked into church on Sunday (a super tiny little group of people meeting in a little building) and met a family that was also Worldschooling. We met up with them again throughout the week, swapping stories about the world, and had SUCH a nice time. I had no idea how much I would miss connecting with people as we travelled.
• Beautiful scenery and new foods. We had the best hummus ever (minus one restaurant n Zakynthos that was on par with this hummus). It is always fun trying a few new foods from each country. I also loved sitting on the deck of our condo and looking out at the beautiful lights each evening while listening to the call to prayer.
• The Basilica Cistern was super cool. It was pricey to enter, but such a unique space filled with art installations and funky lighting. Definitely worth the stop!

Our Day in Oman (Muskat)

Our week in Turkiye was quick… I wish we had more time to explore outside of Istanbul, but we’ll be back someday! We hopped on a flight to Bangkok, stopping in Oman for a short 24 -hr layover.

Oman was a stunning, clean, and quiet place (Muskat). The airport played peaceful music as you entered, there were very few tourists, and all of the buildings and streets were taken care of really well (almost immaculately so). We spent a few hours at the beach while our oldest (Ashur) caught up on his online classes. We got a kick out of the significant currency difference (a meal would be priced at 2.075… sometimes less than 1.00). For some reason, it was really hard for my brain to wrap around the currency exchange there. Again, this is a place I would love to come back and explore for a few days (and go for a camel ride!).

We hopped on another flight, and were off to Thailand for a month!