Evpatoria

Another beautiful place from Crimea with some beautiful Ottoman buildings..The most important one is the Khan Mosque built in 1552 by the famous Architect Sinan of The Ottoman Empire..We had the chance to witness the religious weddings of  some Tatar couples there..

Another one is a dervish lodge and its mosque from the same period.

Evpatoria is an important harbour city in Crimea but it you are looking for sandy beaches you should go outside of the city..

It is full of beautiful old buildings from the imperial days of Russia, but the whole city is waiting a strong hand to renovate them..

Bakhchisaray - Crimea

Our hospital days are continuing..We slowly started to have some results from all the tests that hubby gone thru. Thank God, its not the scary ''C'' word.. It looks like he has secondary reactivated tuberculosis on his lungs. A kind of mutated tuberculosis bacteria which found a place on his lungs when he was young and slept there all these time.

As our hospital days are following one after another, here are some photos from our Crimea trip from June, I neglected to post them for such a long time.

Bakhchisaray is one of the important tourist destinations in Crimea thanks to the palace of the Crimean Khans. Its one of the Muslim palaces located in Europe, along with its famous sisters in İstanbul and Elhamra in Spain. Its a beautiful palace with so much homey feeling. I just loved it.. They started to build it in the 16th century.

Bakhcisaray is a Turkish word (means palace garden) and the name escaped from the Russinization of the names of the places thanks to great Russian poet Alexander Pushkin. He visited this palace when he was exiled in Crimea during1822 and wrote his famous and very long poem ''Fountain of Bakhchisaray'' after this visit. The fountain is still in the palace..

This beautiful town has also a special place in my heart. It' s where my paternal grandmother and grandfather spent their adolescence years before they start their big journey to Anatolia.

Time to Heal...

Life is full of ups and downs. One day we are enjoying an excellent summer in Datca and the next day we are in hospital. Last week started with some problems in the hubby's lungs. As they could not put an accurate diagnosis there, we flew to İstanbul at weekend. Now we are in a larger and specialized hospital and still waiting for a diagnosis. Wish us a speedy diagnosis and recovery.....

Fig Season..

Nowadays fierce barks from Hera in the mornings, signals me our sweet delivery. Its been couple years that freshly picked figs delivered to us by a local farmer and his beautiful transportation. I am so happy with my delicious figs and as for Hera, I am sure that she is wondering a lot why the big dog is not responding to her...

Colors of Aegean...

Here are some more colorful photos from our recent Kos trip. Vibrant colors and all sort of blues under the sunshine are all about Aegean and Mediterranean..

 Wish you a much cooler day than mine....

Back from KOS..

Well, our short trip to Kos - Greece was actually a mid summer get away from one hot place to another. Although our original plan was to visit couple more Greek islands from Kos, we postponed this idea to cooler months, maybe end of September or October..

A short ferry trip from Bodrum to Kos is taking about 40 minutes and waiting right under the sun at the Greek customs office is taking another hour. Town of Kos is full of daily tourists coming from Turkey. Ferries are working all day long.

We chosed to stay at the town of Kefalos which is right at the other side of the island. When we left the town of Kos, we started to realize how hard the Greeks hit by the recent economic crises. All the lovely beaches were empty except couple British tourists...Kefalos was like a semi ghost town during the evening. Some of the tavernas did not  even open for the season..It was rather sad..

However we enjoyed lots of good seafood and local wine. Prices were much cheaper compare to Turkey.

Tough Life !!!

Well, as you can imagine life could be so tough on the sea....

but, thank God that there are plenty of cold drinks waiting when you reach the land...especially this mastic cocktail..

Although I keep posting about our Crimea visit, our tough(!) life at the beach has already started..Photos taken yesterday and tomorrow we are leaving for another short trip to couple Greek İslands.. I have so much to post but these lazy summer days are killing me...
Have a great week...