It’s Family Visit Time!

April 29, 2013

I haven’t been posting as often this week as I’d like to. But I have a great excuse:

MY FAMILY IS IN ISTANBUL!

Barcelona, Spain

To say I’m excited would be an understatement.

My family is the reason that I Iove travelling as much as I do. My parents first brought me on a plane when I was seven weeks old, and they’ve been taking us to fascinating places as long as I can remember.

We’ve explored the Grand Canyon and California redwoods and Yosemite National Park. We’ve eaten gelato in Italy and fish & chips in London and crepes on the streets of Paris. From New York winter to Caribbean sunshine to Vermont autumns, we’ve been all over and I‘m lucky to be part of a family that loves to travel so much. Before my sister and I backpacked through the Balkans, we spent a couple of weeks driving around Spain with my parents. Our family is a solid unit, especially when we travel.

Lake Champlain, Burlington, VT

Except for a brief excursion with my tour guide class, I haven’t been to any of the tourist attractions in Istanbul this year—I’ve done most of them during my previous trips here. So with my family, I have an excuse to play tourist, to show my parents around this beautiful and historic city, and to introduce them to the joys of lahmacun and cig kofte and all the other delicious Turkish foods.

I love my family madly and it’s hard being so far away from them—because they are all based in California now, we have a ten-hour time difference. The fact that we all get to be together is beyond thrilling.

Plus there are two trips out of Istanbul on our itinerary: Antalya in the south, and Amsterdam!

Four Things My Family Will Definitely Do On This Trip:

1. Walk. A lot.

My parents, on a walk in Vermont.

This is the biggest guarantee for a family trip. Public transportation is great, but trips are for walking as much as possible. It lets us see a lot of fascinating things, and get exercise, which means we can…

2. Eat a lot of delicious foods.

Or drink a lot of delicious drinks. Montreal, Canada

Our family gets an exceptional amount of joy from food. My parents have been gourmet cooks since we were children and now Hillary and I are also cooking connoisseurs. So when we’re together, we like to find the local, weird, and wildly delicious food that every city has to offer. Luckily, Istanbul famously is FULL of deliciousness.

3. Devour Art.

Hillary at the Bechtler Museum of Modern Art. Charlotte, NC

It should be no surprise that my family loves art– I started with my photography when my parents set up a darkroom for me in a closet when I was 8–so we absolutely must experience art in the cities we travel to. In Amsterdam, many of the major museums are reopening in the weeks before we arrive, which we intend to take full advantage of. And in Istanbul, I’m excited to go the Istanbul Modern, a museum that I haven’t been to this year but that I’ve always found to be excellent in the past.

4. Take a lot of pictures.