La Luna de Miel Larga

We spent September 11 – October 2 in France and Turkey (Paris, Istanbul, Goreme, and Bodrum) for our honeymoon. We have attached some photos and some stories that we hope you will enjoy!

In Paris, we spent two days at a hotel near the Eiffel Tower. We went to Notre Dame, the Louvre, up the Eiffel Tower, and spent some time walking around the streets and gardens of the city. Our favorite thing to do was eat and drink wine. On the first night, after a delicious dinner ordered off an easel, a woman in the street asked us if we were Jewish and then invited us to her home for Erev Rosh Hashanah (Jewish New Year) dinner. It was a bit random, and a bit difficult to fit in two dinners along with the jet lag our bodies were already experiencing, but it was also really touching and fun.

We flew to Istanbul on September 14, and then spent our two full days there seeing all the different mosques and museums and old buildings and bazaars that we could. We stayed in an old mansion and had a delicious breakfast every morning of yogurt and cheese and eggs and tomatoes and bread. We went to the Blue Mosque and Aya Sofia (used to be a church then was a mosque, now is a museum and a UNESCO site, used to be the largest indoor space in the world before St Peter’s Basilica in Rome was built). We especially loved the Basilica Cisterns (an underground Roman cistern that was discovered in the 19th century when locals told an archaeologist that they could get fresh water out of holes in their basement floors) and Topkapi Palace (where the sultans used to live, with four different courtyards and lots of rooms of cool stuff). We spent some time on the second day at the Archaeology Museum, taking a ferry up the Golden Horn, and having dinner at a cosmopolitan restaurant in Taksim Square (the newer part of the city).

Next we flew to Kayseri, which is a town in Cappadocia in central Turkey. We took a shuttle to Goreme where we stayed for two nights. We stayed in a fairy chimney, which was like living in a cave. We spent our day visiting the Goreme Open Air Museum and hiking in the surrounding Red and Rose Valleys. The landscape is incredible: the first settlers there built all their houses and churches into the rocks and cliffs, and carved or painted the most beautiful frescos. The museum is a walking tour through some of the best-preserved examples of churches and dining rooms. But even when just wandering through the countryside, you can find all these abandoned caves. Many of the town’s residents (and all the tourists) still stay in the fairy chimneys, but many more are empty. Hot air ballooning is also a popular thing to do in the canyon, and although we did not partake, we woke up early one day to watch the sunrise and all the balloons that were out.

Our next stop was the Bodrum peninsula, where we stayed for 10 days in the beachside condo of one of Chris’s dad’s colleagues, near a quiet town called Gundogan. We mostly spent our time there relaxing by the water or reading on the fantastic deck, but we also did some day trips into the town of Bodrum to see the famous Underwater Archaeology Museum and do some shopping and eating. We also took a day trip to the old Roman city of Ephesus (which is up the coast a few hours) and another day we spent scuba diving.

Our last stop was Paris again, where we spent the majority of a day in the Centre Pompidou, which is a modern art gallery.

We hope you enjoy the photos (despite them being a little out of order)! svgallery=honeymoon

1. Joe/Dad Says:
   November 12th, 2007 at 12:18 pm

   Beautiful website! Thank you for creating it.