Travels WithJohn and Janice

Travel blog

Every trip we've shared since 2011—filter by where we went, when we traveled, or what we explored.

Showing 2 of 236 posts

John and Janice at the Library of Celsus in EphesusGreece
6 min read2022

Dateline November 11, 2022, Athens and Ephesus

The land half of the journey behind us, we flew from Cairo to Athens to begin the cruise we had planned for years, from Greece all the way to Dubai. Two days at Piraeus and its bitter orange trees, then aboard the Norwegian Jade to our first stop in Turkey: the House of the Virgin Mary, the vast Roman ruins of Ephesus with its Library of Celsus and great theater, and the lone surviving column of the Temple of Artemis.

#Athens#Piraeus#Ephesus
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John and Janice at the Blue Mosque in IstanbulTurkey
10 min read2016

Dateline June 25, 2016, Istanbul and the End of Ten Weeks

The last leg of our ten weeks took us ashore in Taormina with Gordon and Karen, then off the ship at the port near Rome, where the four of us shared a car to the airport and said our goodbyes. From Rome we flew on to Istanbul, our final stop and the city that was once Constantinople, the Christian capital of the East. We raced the Grand Bazaar before it closed, were welcomed into the Blue Mosque, walked Topkapi and the spice market, and learned afterward that we had stood at the Ataturk Airport checkpoint barely a day before the bombing there. Ten weeks, seventeen countries, and home in time for our anniversary.

#Istanbul#Taormina#Sicily
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