Tenerife is located off the west coast of Africa and is part of the beautiful Canary Islands. It is known as “The Island of Eternal Spring.” Cheap holidays to Tenerife are a great option for a romantic getaway as well as a family vacation. There are plenty of things to see and do and the weather is ideal year round, providing consistent sunshine and warmth. A holiday to Tenerife can consist of white sandy beaches with a lot going on around you. It’s extremely affordable which helps make this destination a great getaway (View Hotel Rates).

One of the most popular tourist attractions in Tenerife is the Las Americas resort which has a large water park and attractions such as sea animals, crocodiles and sea lions. Mount Teide overlooks Tenerife and can be seen in great detail by riding up to the top of the mountain in a cable car to enjoy the view. A number of other wildlife parks are also in the area and further highlight the landscape. Loro Parque has sea life as well as daily shows featuring penguins, tigers and dolphins.

Throughout the course of the year a number of different themed fiestas take place for tourists to enjoy with their families. Many of these fiestas focus on the saint’s days which are religious events that are highly recognized by the locals. American celebrations such as Mardi Gras and Oktoberfest are put to shame with Tenerife’s parties that bring in thousands of visitors each year, adding to the exceptional nightlife.

For those visitors that are in Tenerife with their spouse and have left the kids at home, Bar Imperfecto, which is located in Santa Cruz, provides a nightlife atmosphere complete with rock and alternative music to enjoy. Banana Garden in the Palm Beach area has traditional Mexican food to top off the cultural experience and you can even hear some local music while you dine. After you finish your meal you can join the other guests on the dance floor for the evening. You can also check out a number of musicals and plays that run throughout the year in Tenerife.

During the day there are a great deal of shops that you can pick up some souveniers from in the areas of Tenerife and Santa Cruz. You can also stop by a surf or bike shop to enjoy one of the locals favorite activities: shopping! The number of cultures that are encompassed into Tenerife makes shopping and dining two of the most featured areas of your holiday. You can dine on local fish and lobster which are usually topped with local ‘mojo’ sauce. Every local restaurant has their own take on this topping so you can even make it your mission to find your favorite while you are there.

Taking some time away from your busy schedule to visit Tenerife will surely be something you will want to do again and again. The beautiful blue skies and year round warmth of the sun pretty much guarantees that no matter what time of year you make the trek, you will enjoy your stay. This island never slows down and you can find plenty to do no matter what time of year.

The host seated two men at the table beside us, and a flurry of glasses, plates, and wine bottles followed. They were definitely getting better service than we were. The waiters brought course after course, some brimming with squid ink, others lightly fried like tempura. As far as we could tell, the two men hadn’t said one word to the wait staff.

Our tables were close together, and I overheard bits and pieces of their conversation. It involved buying properties across the globe and shipments between Sicily and Brooklyn, but I couldn’t catch the details. They kept switching from Italian to English as though they were trying to hide something. My ears perked up when I heard something about tax evasion in Buenos Aires. “Big Tony’s been doin’ it for years,” one of the men said. When they mentioned Big Tony again, Kristin kicked me under the table. A shiver ran down my spine: Could we be sitting beside two members of Cosa Nostra, the local version of the Mafia? I was horrified and enthralled. Don’t tick these boys off, I thought, or you’ll be sleepin’ with the next night’s dinner.

A street band began playing Italian classics. They played very loud and very fast. After a particularly intense version of “Mambo Italiano,” the little band asked for tips. I only had a five, and I wasn’t going to give it to them. A sharp glance from one of the Mafiosi got the musicians to leave us in peace. I looked over at the guy, and my eyes accidently made contact. After tipping the musician, he turned toward me.

“Hello,” he said in his Brooklyn accent. “We’re chiropractuhs.”

I pictured bones breaking; it had to be a cover. Their names were Freddie and Alfonso. The conversation rattled on, but they didn’t seem too interested. Then, to my surprise, they invited us for an after-dinner drink. At first, it seemed like a bad idea. But curiosity got the better of me.

Freddie and Alfonso went out to smoke, and I tried to get the waiter’s attention. The waiter took forever, and by the time we paid, Freddie and Alfonso had finished their cigarettes and were standing a ways down the street. As we headed toward them, a car squealed into view. It headed straight for us going at a ridiculous speed. The guys grew tense. The car screeched to a stop, and a massive man with a shaved head emerged from the driver’s seat.

He spoke heatedly with Freddie, who spoke just as heatedly back. I couldn’t understand a word of it, but I saw Freddie and Alfonso reach for the car’s door handles.

“We’ve got to go take care of something real quick,” said Freddie over his shoulder, and just before he ducked into the passenger seat, “Meet us at the Woxy. It’s straight up the street.”

The car departed as it quickly as it had arrived, wheels squealing.

The Woxy? The Italians don’t even use the letter w, and they hardly use the x. “I think they have some business to attend to, if you know what I mean,” I said. We laughed, partly out of nervousness, partly out of relief.

“They were clearly trying to get rid of us,” said Kristin. “The Roxy’s famous. Maybe that’s the first club that came to mind.”

We made a perfunctory search for “the Woxy” without success, then bought a couple beers and wandered the cobblestone streets of the old town. We tried to guess where they had rushed off to, coming up with a handful of unreasonable explanations. Then, on our way back to the hotel, we saw Freddie leaning out of a parked car.

“Yo guys, you find the bar?”

“No,” I said, stunned. “Are you heading that way?”

“Yeah, it’s straight up the street,” said Freddie. “Alfonso had to go home, but my cousin and I were just on our way there.”

The Woxy really does exist. It’s an Irish Pub in Piazza Spirito Santo. When Freddie arrived, something about his demeanor had changed. He was way more relaxed. His cousin was not the big guy from the getaway car. His name was Marco, and he was a laid-back guy with long hair and torn jeans. He was friendly but didn’t speak English. Freddie started to talk about the woman he was going to marry, who lived in Ft. Lauderdale. That’s when I realized that we’d been totally wrong: Freddie actually was a chiropractor.

“Have you ever heard of Ideal Spine? It’s this genius new way of mapping out the geometric structure of each individual vertebra. You should check it out. W-W-W dot ideal spine dot com. He’s the new way of chiropractory. Nothing this big has happened in the field since the seventies.”

As I listened to Freddie go on about being a chiropractor and about the girl he loves and how nervous he was about asking her to be his wife, I realized that this—what I’d been viewing as my Adventure with the Mafia—was all in my head. I’d taken my preconceived notions of Sicily and slapped them straight onto Freddie and Alfonso. How could I have thought that this chiropractor from Brooklyn could be a Mafioso? I have no idea. But I was a little disappointed that he wasn’t.

After the drinks, we left the bar and Freddie and his cousin took us to a long set of steps packed with people drinking and smoking. There, we learned why Freddie’s demeanor had seemed to relax.

“You want to smoke some weed?” he asked.

On the steps, surrounded by the nightlife of Catania, we told Freddie that our next stop would be Taormina. He called the city “paralyzingly beautiful,” and his cousin nodded in agreement. Freddie recommended a restaurant.

“If you go,” he said, “tell Nino Freddie sends his respect.”

For more writing and photos by Mattie Bamman, the Ravenous Traveler, check out www.europeupclose.com

The place to start is at the Kyrenia gate tourist office. Here you can pick up your Blue Line map which is the perfect guide and all you need to explore Nicosia. A broad blue line painted on the road or footpath takes you on a circuit around the city taking in all the places of interest along the way. The reverse of the map gives you pertinent or historical detail of the twenty places along the route. The walk itself stays within the walls of the old city and can take up to four hours or more depending on your level of fascination with the places visited.

One of the more unusual places of interest is the Mevlevi Lodge, the museum of the Whirling Dervishers, no 20 on the map. First built in the 17th century, it provided some accommodation for the pilgrims when they came to pray. It was closed in 1954 but restored and reopened in 2,000. There are 16 very interesting tombs still in the mausoleum and models showing the Dervishers at prayer. Dervishers still come over from Turkey from time to time and use Mevlevi lodge for prayer. Invited audiences are allowed to witness their whirling in silence with absolutely no clapping.

The Buyuk Han, or the Great Inn, built in the Ottoman period is one of the major attractions. Originally an inn for itinerant traders, there were rooms on the ground floor to house their goods and camels with merchants sleeping quarters upstairs. Nowadays these rooms have been converted into shops, largely selling handicrafts, and some into restaurants.

Few people will want to miss Arasta, the very traditional main shopping street where the traders allow their goods to spill out onto the street creating a colourful and busy atmosphere.

For further information visit: North Cyprus holidays

View of Gran Via, Madrid, taken from top deck of Madrid Vision tour bus.

European buses tend to be a favorite way to travel for those budget travelers like students and backpackers. But there is another great option that Europe’s buses have to offer. Buses offer a great way to tour the city or visit the country side. The Double Decker open air buses are the best ways to see cities like Amsterdam or London to name a couple. Then there is the other side of the bus spectrum like the luxury buses that allow to visit things like the fjords in Norway or the Scottish Highlands in… well I think you know where these travel.

Norway can be one of the most beautiful places to take a Europe bus tour. Most of these tours offer the combination of bus and boat, this is the best option. If taking a tour in Norway the best place to start is in the countries capital Oslo. If you just want to see the city you can get on a Double Decker and do a hop on hop off tour. The best way to visit Norway is to take a full day grand tour that involves a luxury bus and a boat ride which allows you to see the fjords and the one of a kind coast line from two different perspectives.

When visiting the Netherlands the best way to see the country is on a Europe bus tour. Start off in Amsterdam and take a nine hour tour around the country. The one good thing about the Netherlands being the densest country in world is that it allows you to see a large part of the country in one day by bus and with out all the hassles of driving or catching trains.

If history is your thing then you can not skip Berlin, Germany. The city offers so many historic relics to the past and even new monuments dedicated to the struggles during World War II like the Jewish War Memorial. There is so much to see it might seem overwhelming and make it hard to choose a starting point. Well the hop on hop off tour makes your decision making much easier. The guided tour is offered in a multitude of languages and allows you to jump off at one of your favorite spots and hop back on the next bus comes. Even if this is not enough you can upgrade to a boat tour or even a full day in Hamburg.

The great thing about Europe bus tours is that you can visit multiple countries in one day tour. If mountains and beautiful lakes are your style then you can not miss a tour starting in Zurich going through the Swiss Alps and visiting one of the most beautiful and smallest countries in the world, the Principality of Liechtenstein. The tour allows leisurely walks in the mountains and a stop at the post office. Post office you say? This unique post office has some of the most coveted stamps around and is a must stop for any collectors.

During your journey to travel enlightenment, what better way to increase your good karma then by contributing to the local communities and preserving the environment. This goal can be accomplished through many unique, educational, and not to mention, tasty activities. Indulge in 5 course meals organically produced from local farms, escape inside a tree house surrounded by lush tropical jungle, or spend a day exploring the pristine natural habitats at a national park.

Over the next few weeks, we shall follow in Gilbert’s (and, insert infectious belly laugh here, Julie’s) footsteps and emulate her journey, while adding our own sustainable twist. We will shed light on the expansive value sustainability has to offer the community, the environment, and also most importantly, you!

From Farm to Fork

When I think of Italy, one of the first things that comes to my mind is food. My mouth waters just thinking about the delectable feasts full of alluring aromas, eye catching displays of fresh produce and authentic flavors.

Taste buds aside, few of us take the time to ask ourselves, “where exactly is this food coming from?” Is the food being imported internationally? Is the produce genetically modified or drenched in pesticides? What are the ethics and standards of the farmer who provided the components of this meal? No one’s perfect. Gilbert doesn’t pray for answers about the origins of her pasta, Julia Roberts doesn’t stare pensively at the pizza crust. It’s natural that these questions get overlooked when our innate drive for immediate gelatto gratification takes over.

But remember, this book/movie is about self-improvement and growth, and no one said those things were easy. So, maybe it’s time to ponder these questions with the same ferocity as you would an Italian wine list. Food is an important component of sustainability, in terms of preserving land and supporting the local economy. Not to mention, maintaining your own health and piece of mind by keeping those unpronounceable mystery ingredients out of your system!

You can rest your mind at ease while enjoying your stay at the Locanda della Valle Nuova, a unique property that lies within its very own 185 acre organically run farm. This quaint accommodation rests just outside the UNESCO World Heritage recognized town of Urbino, where it holds quality at the highest of standards not only in food preparation but also in energy conservation, and waste management. They are doing their part to “tread lightly on the earth,” by growing their own wheat, vegetables, and fruit as well as raising their own livestock on 100% natural feed. Satisfy your palate with delectable home made bread, pasta, jams and wine all completely sourced from the property and prepared traditionally.

After you’ve recovered from you’re belly-busting indulgences, burn those calories by taking a nature hike through the nearby Risera Naturale Gola del Furlo. Or, seize the opportunity to ride horseback and relish in the natural beauty of the charming countryside. The Locanda offers a wide array of activities for you to reconnect with nature in one way or another.

Does sustainable eating in Italy hit a sweet note with your earth-loving taste buds? Fill out a custom trip request form , and we’ll have you on your way in a flash of a toothy Julie Roberts smile! If not, stay tuned; we’ll cover sustainable praying and loving in India and Indonesia soon!

I walk to the bus station and catch a bus to Bogove, where there are reported to be some beautiful waterfalls and a swimming hole that the locals enjoy.  The bus is a big one, an old touring bus too worn out for tourists but upscale for a local bus.  By the time we reach the edge of Berat it’s full.  We ride for an hour through a landscape similar to western Colorado.  There’s a lot of that here.

This road resembles the road between Crawford and Gunnison: steep drop-offs to our right, heavily forested, high snow-capped peaks in the distance.  The main difference here is that I’m riding in a large bus and about every 300 yards we pass a bouquet of flowers marking the place where someone – or a busload of someones – flew off the edge into Never-Never Land.  They say that auto accidents are the leading cause of death in Albania.  I saw a couple on my way from Macedonia and I believe what they say.

There aren’t enough passengers continuing on from Skrappar to Bogove so I must wait for the next furgon – a mini-bus – to load up.  This is a nice little town.  A wide promenade leads from a large square where the buses and taxis congregate so I decide to stroll along and do a little people-watching while waiting.  It’s mid-morning coffee time; people of all ages are strolling the promenade and men fill the cafes drinking coffee.  Women don’t sit and drink coffee in Albania.  It’s acceptable for foreign women to do so because, well, they’re strange, but a local woman would never do that.  After the stroll I return to the square to sit in the sun and keep my eye on the mini-bus.  I have no idea what time it will leave, what time I must be back from Bogove to catch the return bus to Berat, nor for that matter do I have any idea what time it is in the moment!  I’m soon joined by Buca Rosa – her name means Beautiful Rose in English.

Now . . .  there are 3 kinds of Albanians when it comes to communicating with foreigners.  There are those who speak English and enjoy talking with you in English.  There are those who don’t speak English, never utter a word but who are very adept at communicating with hand signals, facial expressions, and tone of voice.  Then there are those who speak only Albanian and know you don’t speak or understand Albanian but that doesn’t phase them.  They chatter away.  Buca Rosa is one of the last.  I think perhaps she is a little simple-minded, but she is very sweet nonetheless.  In the end she asks me if I will take her photo and she poses with a broken and crumpled unlit cigarette and a rose, then hands me the two roses she has picked from the park’s garden.  The furgon begins filling and I go to catch it.  Good-bye, beautiful Rose. I shall not pass this way again.

The following day I leave Berat for Tirana.  I don’t quite know where I am when the furgon drops me off in Tirana.  The guide book had said I would be dropped off near the train station.  I look around,  but there is none.  I try to get oriented, but before I can I’m surrounded by helpful Albanians.  I must tell you, the Albanian willingness to help is wonderful.  But it can be a little difficult to manage when it’s six taxi drivers who don’t speak English and want to get you loaded into the next available taxi.  It becomes a bit like playing the game Charades.  I say a word and one of the taxi drivers thinks he understands and begins animatedly telling the others what I want and waving for me to get into the taxi.

“No, no, no!” I protest, and sit down on the curb with my guide book to gather my thoughts.  Soon a random passerby is pulled into the discussion.  He seems to understand most of my needs but he can’t understand something as complex as -

“Are there good places to stay in Shkodra? I don’t yet know if I want to stay here in Tirana or go on to Shkodra.” or, “I have all these leke I need to exchange before I leave the country.  Is there a bank nearby?”

So I hunker down with my book again and try to ignore the fray above me.  But my book is still no help.  There are no hotels or hostels listed for Shkodra and I have no idea how many leke I’ll need to get there.  I finally decide to let them hustle me into a taxi and get on with my life, trusting in Fate once again.  I tell the tax driver to take me to the bus station but no sooner is the door of the taxi closed then I decide I should just stay in Tirana.

I know of a good hostel here and I can get myself settled and oriented in peace and quiet.  I also know the hostel owners will speak English and be able to guide me where I want to go.  I don’t particularly want to stay in Tirana but neither do I want to stay in Shkodra so I may as well stay in Tirana where the landscape is somewhat known.  At least I have a map and a guide to the city and at least I know there’s someplace I can get the information I need.  So I direct the driver to the Tirana Backpacker Hostel.

“What?”  He looks at me like I’m insane, shrugs his shoulders and says something to his friends and we head to the hostel.

This was the right decision.  It’s a very nice hostel.  The owner and staff do indeed speak good English, there’s a kitchen available for my use and a grocery store just down the street.  I know exactly how many leke I’ll need to get out of Dodge tomorrow and I can settle in for the afternoon and write.  As I settle into my room the clouds open up and pour.  Let it rain, let it rain, let it rain.  I don’t care.

This is me outside, don't look at me, haha.

OK, into the Louvre we go.  Please note:  I had a crappy point and shoot camera at the time and you do what you can.  Also, if you plan to go to the Louvre be advised that you are not allowed to take pictures with a flash while you are inside.  So turn your flash off.  Some cameras have a museum mode on them now days so that tends to work.  Mine didn’t and you will notice some of them are not as sharp as I would have liked.

Much like the entire city and architecture that is Paris the Louvre offers some beautiful sculptures.

This was one of my favorite pictures I took.

Look a Butterfly

Resting in the sun

Venus de Milo

Napoleon Crowning Josephine

You probably noticed that most of the pictures I took were of statues and not paintings.  I took some pictures of paintings but with my camera they just didn’t turn out to well.  This one I took of Napoleon Crowning Josephine turned out better than the rest.  Probably because I took like 20 of them before I got one to look descent.

This painting is one of the more well know ones not called the Mona Lisa.  Around 200 years ago, Napoleon threw himself a elaborate coronation ceremony at Notre-Dame Cathedral.  He then hired the artist Jacques-Louis David to commemorate it all.  The painting measures over 500 sqaure feet.  Whats interesting is the painting actually don’t depict what’s really going on at all.

In it you watch Napoleon crowing Josephine but according to early sketches by the artist they showed Napoleon crowning himself.  The thought process hear was to make Napoleon appear more generous and less self serving.  In addition Napoleon had the painter include his mother in the picture despite the fact that she arrived late to Paris on purpose as to not attend.

Also note how the unenthusiastic Pope Pius VII is represented.  Early sketches depicted him as he was that day, not happy to be dragged from Rome to Paris and sitting at his altar, hands in lap.  When Napoleon seen the early sketches he scolded his painter and told him “I didn’t have him come so far to do nothing!”  The final painting depicts the pope with his arms slightly raised holding his scepter in a half hearted blessing.  Still, he appears to have a scowl on his face. The Pope’s chair also appears lower then it would have been so that Napoleon appears relatively larger.  In addition Josephine is depicted as a much prettier and younger version of herself.  The same generosity is given to Napoleons depiction as well.  It seems Napoleon was determined to recreate the memory of his ceremony to his liking.

So why am I telling you all this all of a sudden, hey I thought this was a picture post?  Yeah, I know but my point was that while in Paris we visited a lot of places and sometimes we had a guide and sometimes we didn’t.  At first, I thought, I really don’t want a guide.  I just want to do things at my pace and discover on my own.  But you see, on such a occasion I stood and listed to a tour guide describing this painting to his little groupies.  I really enjoyed learning the history.  It made everything more memorable to me to be able to put a story behind what I was looking at.  If you haven’t tried tour guides you should give it go.  Well I hoped you like this days photo post as we walked through the Louvre Museum.

Istanbul is no doubt a great place for shopping. Have a walk in the Grand Bazaar, a virtual labyrinth of fascinating shops; it’s easy to be drawn by the carpets, copper and brassware, jewelry and all kinds of ceramics.

Hmm, no. My story is not titled ‘Shopping in Istanbul’. I’m more interested in people.

It didn’t take long for me to realize this special and interesting culture of Turkish shopkeepers: the ‘Where are you from?’ culture.

The day I arrived in Istanbul I was told that shopkeepers there like to ask that question (if not a little obsessed with it), and no matter what country you answer they will tell you they have a close relative living there, very close to you. I had no idea how true that piece of information was as I’d just arrived in the city. I started wandering around touristy places and reached the Grand Bazaar. I was fascinated by the nicely arranged shops and the colorful ceramics. I stopped at one or two of the atmospheric little shops, was asked where I was from, but didn’t pay much attention to that until I reached this carpet shop.

The shopkeeper started by quite an odd opening, ‘Your eyes are tired.’

Feeling a bit puzzled, I stopped.

‘You’ve seen too many carpets, your eyes are tired.’

‘Ah, yes, quite.’ I was just trying to give the desired answer; I hadn’t seen any carpet at all.

‘Where are you from?’

‘Canada,’ said my partner.

‘Oh, my wife is from Canada,’ he said with that look as if he’d just found a long lost friend. ‘What about you, lady?’

‘Hmm, Hong Kong.’

‘My wife’s sister is now living in Hong Kong!’ The way he responded gave me the impression that I was only given a standard response. If I said ‘Taiwan’ his wife’s sister would have been living in Taiwan; or if I said ‘Japan’, then the response would have been rephrased with Japan.

The rest of the conversation was all about his carpet shop, where the carpets were from, how they were made and such. I didn’t pay much attention, as I was still amused by his response, remembering what I was told when I arrived.

As we kept walking around the Bazaar, we saw so many more shopkeepers who asked just this very same question, ‘Where are you from?’ Quite predictably, a lot of them had some brothers, sisters, nephews, or uncles living very close to us. I couldn’t understand why, but instead of finding it annoying, we found it quite amusing. Each time we were asked that question by a new shopkeeper we exchanged smile as if we were saying, ‘Hee, another one!’ Sometimes we would even prepare a surprising answer to see how they would respond.

We didn’t count how many times we were asked that question, but we would definitely have failed and lost count if we had tried.

Things were pretty much the same in other parts of Turkey.

In Antalya, even the restaurants asked the same question. Each time we walked past an eating-place the friendly waiters would rush to us and show us each item on their menu. In the conversations, they never forgot to ask where we were from.

I remember this one restaurant just at the entrance of the old town. We were not interested in the place, but were stopped by a very talkative waiter. As expected he began by asking that question, we didn’t answer. He continued promoting his restaurant. Still, we were not interested, so we said ‘Thank you’ and walked away. As we walked, we heard the fading voice of the waiter, asking, ‘Where are you from? Hey, where are you from?’ I couldn’t help but feel really puzzled this time. Why was he so interested in asking that, even if we were walking away, obviously not interested in what he was selling?

If I was to write a list of fun memories of my trip to Turkey, ‘Where are you from?’ would no doubt be the top of it. I’d never answered that question so many times in my life, come to think of it.

Check out Janice’s blog Wide World, Little Places or follow her on Facebook
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Just looking at the little things I collected on the trip – an album of a busker band, an Irish whistle, and a nice photo of two buskers and me – I seem to hear music playing in my head. The trip to Dublin gave me a new impression of the city, something I never knew before: Dublin is a city of music.

The strong busking culture has made street musicians one of Dublin’s popular live attractions. Grafton Street, in particular, is a must-visit place where buskers compete to catch your attention. Buskers! Something prohibited altogether in the city I come from (as it is seen by law-makers as a form of begging, which is not legally allowed). I could hardly wait; I wandered through the Street on the first day. It did not disappoint me, but filled me with joy and lots of music. I had seen street artists before, but never as impressive as the ones in Dublin. All I can say is, a lot of them are real musicians. It was only after the trip that I learned Bono the lead singer of Irish band U2 and Damien Rice were once buskers too. I wonder if the ones I saw that afternoon had the same secret wish of rising to fame?

The group that caught my attention was called Mutefish, a group of 5. The sound of the traditional Irish whistle pulled pedestrians together, forming a big circle outside a famous chain store. I was stunned by their music, the lead player and his well-practised fingers on the tin whistle. The audience was clearly delighted with the performance – some dancing, some clapping, some nodding to the beat, some pulling out a €10 note for an album. From time to time the lead player switched from tin whistle to Irish flute, not only creating the utterly Irish experience, but also making their performance fresh and exciting. I let myself indulge in the music for one whole hour, then another hour before I finally collected the most precious souvenir of the trip. This very moment as I write I am playing one of their tunes, remembering that spring afternoon in Grafton Street where I collected this album.

Have a stroll along Grafton Street you will find so many more buskers. Some of them you know they are young, very young; some of them you wonder if they have been busking all their lives; some of them are very talented singer; some of them sing to an empty street. As I came closer to the end of the street, I realized I had not even seen one shop. All that caught my eyes, or more exactly my ears, were the buskers and music.

From traditional Irish tunes to rock and pop, from fantastically fabulous to tuneless, Dublin buskers definitely have a lot to offer.

Check out Janice’s travel blog Wide World, Little Places or follow her on Facebook
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If you’re bored of the busy city scenes of Istanbul, you may probably want to escape to the less touristy Cappadocia. To say that Cappadocia is beautiful is definitely an understatement. It is a region of magnificent ‘fairy chimney’ rock formations and mysterious underground cities.

Don’t miss:

1. Stay in town Goreme. Then take a day tour to explore nearby areas. Don’t take the Cappadocia tour, since most places you can go by yourself. Take the Ihlara tour instead, to explore more of the region. Most Ihlara tour will take you to the Goreme panorama where you can see the spectacular view of Cappadocia, the Ihlara Valley and the biggest underground city Derinkuyu where you can explore as much as 55 meters underground.
2. For those who want something more special than climbing mountains or going underground, try a hot-air balloon tour. If you are thinking of something romantic like the two of you going high up in the sky, you will probably get quite disappointed. In one balloon there are about 25 people. Up in the air, there can be as many as 30 balloons at the same time. Busy traffic!
3. At night, instead of having a regular dinner in the restaurants, try the Turkish Night. You can just sit back and enjoy the traditional Turkish dance while having dinner (included in the price). If you are lucky enough you can even be part of the show and dance with the belly dancer!

There are overnight buses that run daily from Istanbul to Cappadocia. They leave in the evening, so you can save the hotel rate for a night. However, if 11 hours is way too much for you, you can also take a flight from Istanbul, which takes about one hour.

In Cappadocia, one thing you will find very special is the accommodation. There is no Hilton or Sheraton, but lots of cave hotels, or more exactly, pensions. There is an accommodation office at the bus station, but you can actually walk around to check out the pensions yourself. They are quite close to each other, and are very easy to find. Spending nights in a cave is a very special experience, and it is cheap! Cave rooms are generally quite cheap in town Goreme, and they have very good service!

Check out Janice’s travel blog Wide World, Little Placesor follow her on Facebook

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