Travel Day(s)

Today was the big travel day where we

Storks nesting on the old city walls.

leave Turkey and head to South Africa!  We all knew it was going to be a long day as we were catching the train from Selcuk at 9am and getting into Cape Town at 11:45 the following morning!  So off past the nests of storks near the train station in Selcuk to catch the train to the airport.  It stops right at the airport so it made for a pretty easy commute.  We had a wait there and then onto Istanbul.

That flight was easy and we had 5 hours in Istanbul which made for collecting our bags, moving to the international departures and rechecking in for a nice mellow, stress free endeavour.  Grabbed some food and got the crib board out and next thing you know, we’re boarding the plane.  I have to say Emirates Airlines is incredible and if you ever have the option, go with them.  It’s like the old ways were you get food, drinks, alcohol, blankets, you name it and they serve it... for free!  The trip to Dubai went way faster than I thought it would and next thing you know we’re climbing off that plane to jump on a bus that takes you to the terminal.  Walking out of the plane we were hit with 39C heat in the middle of the night.  I can’t imagine what it would be like in the heat of the day.

Train station in Selcuk.

Another short stopover in Dubai, which I was glad we had as we had to go through security again and find our gate in this huge airport so we had enough time to make the experience totally stress free.  Back on the plane for the big 9.5 hours to Cape Town.  We all managed to get a bit of sleep on the plane and were awakened to the smell of breakfast and coffee.  I couldn’t stop thinking how much I love this airline!  Showed up in Cape Town to almost 20C which wasn’t too bad and all our bags showed up which was an added bonus!  We were off to find our car rental and venture off to Simon’s Town where our accommodation was.

There are a few things about South Africa which came apparent pretty quickly.  The goofy buggers are or were heavily influenced by England (not surprising as they were a colonized country) and somehow adopted driving on the wrong side of the road.  So here I go again with climbing into the wrong side of the vehicle and started driving out of the airport on the wrong side of the road!  Corrected that quickly and made it to our place after an unscheduled tour of Cape Town.  Took a bit longer than anticipated but finally we made it.  Wow, what a beautiful place.  We all got our first views of the shanty towns on the way in from the airport and also toured a few areas with beautiful big houses which are all gated and heavily fortified. 

Airport in Izmir.

We arrived in Simonstown and met Pauline, our super friendly, kind host who gave us a run down on the place and the area.  Our place has this stunning view of False Bay and we can see right across to the other side.  We even managed to see whales and dolphins from our deck within one hour of arriving!  It turns out that South Africa has an issue with electricity and is on a blackout system where they are informed in the morning that certain areas will be without power for most of the day.  So far so good but Pauline did inform us to keep our laptop and cell phones charged as you find out the day of the blackout.

Airport in Istanbul.

Airport in Dubai.

Shannon and I headed out to a nearby town to grab some food for the time we’re here and discovered that things are similar to home in terms of food and grocery stores.  It was nice to stock up some food we all will like but unfortunately for Jenna we couldn’t find any Kraft Dinner.  Apparently that’s the first meal we’re having when we get home for her birthday dinner!  It’s pretty cool, we drove no more than five minutes and went from the Indian Ocean to the Atlantic in that time!  The surf looks pretty big on the Atlantic side but apparently its super cold as the water comes up from the Antarctic current.  We headed home for dinner and some English TV and I think it was the crack of 9pm and we were crashed.   Wow, that was a quick two days!!!

Whales sighted from our deck.