Toronto, Canada

We've been back home now for a few days, catching up on laundry and home stuff.

Our flight back was good, and we got through Pearson really quickly. We actually deplaned at a satellite terminal, which Pearson calls the Infield Concourse and then bussed over to immigration at T3. I thought it might take some time for our luggage to be carted over, but it was really quick. We were through the airport in under an hour, which is really fast for Pearson.

There were highlights almost every day on the trip. Here's what made my Top 100 list and their current rank. There's now finally 100 places on the list :)

• 34 Great Pyramid, Giza, Egypt (already on the list)
• 37 Sagalassos Ancient City, Türkiye
• 55 Sanahin Monastery Complex, Alaverdi, Armenia
• 59 Ani Ruins, Kars, Türkiye
• 61 Acropolis, Athens, Greece (already on the list)
• 74 Corvo Caldeirão on Corvo Island in the Azores
• 76 Rose Valley, Cappadocia, Türkiye
• 78 Abu Simbel Temples, Abu Simbel, Egypt
• 96 Ephesus Ancient City, Selçuk, Türkiye

I was really impressed with Armenia, which I didn't know much about prior to the trip. It has an amazing cultural background -- they even invented their own script in 405 AD, to match their language! There's dozens of monasteries around the country, some abandoned, some still functional, and most of them in really cool settings. We only saw six and all were amazing. If you're trying to figure out where to go for your next vacation, I'd strongly suggest Armenia.

We had to rearrange our itinerary a few times, which is not unusual for ten week trip. We swapped out the southeast of Türkiye, and instead went to Sofia and Belgrade; and also had minor changes in northeast Türkiye and in the Azores. All the changes ended up working out for the better. The southeast of Türkiye is probably better as a whole separate road trip, from Mount Nemrut in central Türkiye through to Ishak Pasha Palace in the east, passing through Mardin and Dara.

There were lots of unexpected highlights, such as hearing the pipe organist in the Angra do Heroismo Museum in Terceira, driving through the Kaçkar mountains (as a result of one of our itinerary changes :) ), walking through Rose Valley in Cappadocia, the amazing monasteries in Armenia, the Terraces at Ephesus, and the mini-Olympic museum in Panathenaic Stadium in Athens.

We saw two of the Ancient Wonders of the World, which wasn't intentionallly planned. We saw the Great Pyramid in Egypt from the GEM Museum, and then saw the remains of the Temple of Artemis. Technically it's just the site of the Temple of Artemis, but still :)

I posted 224 pics, of which only 28 (12.5%) were from my camera. I think it's still worthwhile to bring my camera on the trip for when I need a larger zoom, but for day-to-day touristing, I didn't bother to carry my camera in my daypack.

Overtourism is becoming more and more apparent. In particular, cruise ships depositing thousands of tourists for a quick day trip overwhelms the destination, which we saw in Lisbon and Valetta. I actually plan trips to avoid cruise ships in port (there's websites with the timetables). Our favourite places on this trip were those that don't typically attract a lot of tourists, such as Konya, Corvo and Flores Islands in the Azores, Ani ruins, Armenia, and the Ancient Cities in Türkiye not easily accessible by day trip from Antalya. It's usually a bit more effort to get to these locations, but we find it worthwhile. Luckily, there's still lots of these types of places in the world to see :)

Ponta Delgada, Azores

We could have booked better connecting flights from Graciosa to Toronto, but the inter-island flights are sometimes delayed or canceled due to weather. So I had scheduled a couple nights in Ponta Delgada as a buffer.

Our last time through the Azores in 2019, we spent five days on San Miguel island, but it was all about seeing the natural wonders of the island. We only went into Ponta Delgada for dinners. So this also gave us a chance to see the capital.

Ponta Delgada is sometimes described as the town that is a city. It has all the things you’d expect in a big city - a central plaza, a boardwalk along the waterfront, pedestrian-only streets, hip restaurants and bars, museums - but everything is within walking distance. Even the airport is just a ten minute drive.

We were lucky that there were no cruise ships in port today. Some days, these can dump over 5,000 tourists into the town. It’s almost impossible to get into restaurants during this time.

We walked over to the main plaza and visited Igreja Matriz de São Sebastião. Then we took more pics in the plaza, this time with a blue sky in the background. It was a pleasant day, 16C that felt like 16C. We were too used to the high winds and rain in Graciosa and Terceira where it was 16C-feels-like-3C, that we overdressed with both our puffy jackets and windbreakers. We shed both of those quickly.

Next we climbed up the clock tower. The last bit is a narrow spiral staircase, which we barely fit in, and we’re not big people. I could see this being a major bottleneck when cruise ships are in port. There’s a cool view from up top of the water fountain in the plaza below, the city, and the port.

We could see a large church in the distance so that’s where we headed next. Turned out the church bordered on the same park as Santuário do Senhor Santo Cristo dos Milagres, the focal point of the festival.

Nearby was Forte de São Brás, another site on my list to see. We circled around trying to find the entrance. It houses the Military Museum of Azores, 5 EUR entry cash-only. We bought our tickets and entered.

The museum is well-mapped out for independent visiting. Some of the exhibits are in the old tunnels of the ramparts, which were cool to walk through. I’m not much for military museums, although they did have a nice collection of old minesweepers and communication equipment. Someone into this stuff could probably spend a couple hours wandering through. They also had some art interspersed throughout, which I found more interesting. The main attraction for me though was walking up top of the ramparts, and the views from there.

We had lunch at a very local diner, with only four tables and three stools at the bar. We ordered two bifanas and were able to get seats at the bar. After we ordered two espressos and a chocolate mousse. The mousse wasn’t on the menu, but one of the regulars had ordered one and we saw the owner pull out the tray from the fridge. The food was excellent and we didn’t overeat.

The diner was right across the street from Portugal Nice Things, a souvenir shop with some cool stuff. We bought a bunch of nice things.

We dropped off the souvenirs at the hotel and then did some more souvenir shopping. There’s a four block neighbourhood that is artsy and are branding themselves as a place to shop. It reminded us of Leslieville before it gentrified, when the local boutiques distributed flyers showing the location of all the shops along Queen St E. Anyways bought of few more things.

We had dinner at Pedro Homen Bîstro. We had a regional assortment of cheeses as an appetizer, and then the mixed grill (flank steak and striploin), both of which were excellent. It was a nice way to end our ten week trip.

Ponta Delgada, Azores

We were homeward bound, with a flight today from Graciosa to Ponta Delgada via Terceira. We then have a couple nights in Ponta Delgada before flying back direct to Toronto. It’s a lot shorter than our epic four-day journey back home from Waiheke Island, New Zealand in 2023!

We had gotten pretty quick at packing up our stuff. We loaded up the car and drove to the gas station. There’s only two on Graciosa, right beside each other. They didn’t take international credit cards, which I knew from reading the comments, but we had enough cash on us. Plus it’s a small island, so despite circumnavigating the island, we only spent 9 EUR in gas.

Onto the airport. Our car rental folks were supposed to meet us at 8:30am, but we didn’t see them. We checked in for the flight, and decided if they didn’t show by 9am we’d just leave the keys in the car. However the guy showed up around 8:50, he actually worked at the airport and was just waiting for a break.

We had to dump our water before going through security, and there were no facilities airside. Our flight was delayed by ten minutes, which meant we had just 30 minutes to transfer in Terceira.

We heard the boarding announcement for our connecting flight while we were walking into the terminal in Terceira. Luckily we were familiar with the airport so I knew where to buy water in the short time we were there.

It was then another quick flight to Ponta Delgada. It was raining as we disembarked, and looked like it had just finished a downpour. We were wearing our rain jackets with hoods so we didn’t get too wet.

Our luggage made the tight connection as well. Our hotel was picking us up at the airport and had WhatsApp’d as soon as we landed that they might be a few minutes late (they had tracked our flight and knew when we landed).

We chatted with our driver on the ten minute drive to the hotel. Heather had read that we would arrive in the middle of the Festas do Senhor Santo Cristo dos Milagres (Festival of the Holy Christ of Miracles), the biggest celebration in the Azores. Thousands of expats return to the Azores just for this event. The big day was yesterday, with a five hour procession through town. Today was a municipal holiday (I had just tracked national holidays on my spreadsheet), so most things were closed.

We checked into the Casa da Galeria, and went out for lunch. We stumbled across a popular burger place that got 4.7 on Google so tried it out, it was pretty good.

We walked to the centre and took some pics with cloudy backgrounds, and then went back to the hotel and relaxed. Later in the evening I went out for some small bites at a restaurant just up the street (Heather was still full from the burger place). It hit the spot, considering most other places were closed.

Graciosa Island, Azores

Another day, another Furna Do Enxofre Caldeira. The lava cave here was the reason we came to Graciosa. I didn’t realize there was one on Terceira as well, until we got there.

We had given a load of laundry to Isabel yesterday, with instructions to wash and not dry. She came back with a drying rack, and by this morning all our clothes were dry. We’re now good to get ourselves home with clean clothes.

After breakfast, we dropped by the local supermarket (it closed at 1pm on Sundays) to get some charcuterie for dinner. It was slim pickings, and no bread as the bakers all take Sundays off.

Anyways the lava cave was just a 15 minute drive from our bnb. (The island is so small that anything is within a 30 minute drive). It’s in the middle of a larger caldera. From the parking lot, it’s about 150 steps down to the visitor center. We bought our tickets, taking note of the monitors displaying the CO₂ levels at various locations in the cave. The lowest point of the cave accessible to tourists was at 0.04%, which was slightly above normal atmosphere of 0.033%, and well below the permissible exposure limit of 0.5%. The danger is from CO₂ suddenly degassing from the lake.

From the visitors centre, it’s another bunch of stairs down to the tower, and then another 37m down a circular staircase to the cave entrance. There’s windows along the staircase to look out, except pigeons are fond of landing on the window ledges and then pooping. Luckily there was no one climbing up at the same time as we didn’t want to brush up against the sides of the narrow staircase.

At the bottom, there’s an elevated boardwalk leading into the cave. At the end is a view down into a bubbling mud fumarole. Only then did I notice that in the background of the cave was a lake! There’s dim lighting throughout the cave, so it’s easy to see but hard to get context. There’s also a rowboat used by researchers, and once I saw that it was easier to see the lake. Back in the day, tourists were allowed down to lake level, but there’s more danger there from sudden CO₂ emissions.

We took a bunch of pics, trying to illustrate the lake and cave in the frame. Then it was back up all those stairs.

We spent some time in the visitor centre reading all the displays. Then back up a bunch more stairs to the car.

We stopped by another supermarket on the north end, hoping for bread, but it was the same story. Picked up some crackers instead. While I was shopping, Heather was able to watch a Holy Spirit procession. We had read about these in the museums, and it was cool to see it in real life. (Editor's note: the procession more likely was related to Festas do Senhor Santo Cristo dos Milagres)

Next we drove up to the lighthouse on the east side of the island, Farol do Carapacho, up top of a hill. It was a beautiful looking lighthouse per Heather. It had nice viewpoints for taking in the view. There’s also an old whaler’s lookout, where the lookout person was stationed all day watching for whales. We had seen these on a couple other islands in the Azores so we knew what it was :)

We then drove back down the hill to a lunch place I had found on Google Maps. The restaurant turned out to be part of a spa, open to non-spa users. The spa was busy, based on the number of cars in the parking lot.

Lunch was pretty good, we had a potato soup starter and then I had the grilled calamari and Heather the seafood with rice. It was our big meal of the day, as it was Sunday and not much open for dinner.

It was still early afternoon so we continued our drive around the island to the lighthouse on the west end, Farol da Ponta da Barca. It was another nice-looking lighthouse, although without the visitor viewpoints. It was super windy (it was this way the whole time we were on Graciosa) and we were worried about a gust taking us over the cliff edge so we stayed safely away.

We then drove about five minutes east to the capital of Graciosa, Santa Cruz. We parked in the centre, and then walked over to a windmill to take pics. Graciosa is also known for its restored windmills, some of which have been converted to bnbs.

We also saw (and heard) cars on a race track just below the windmills. It looked like a closed circuit where folks could race their cars one at a time. There was a crowd watching the cars (as much as you can get a crowd on Graciosa), looked like the thing to do on a Sunday.

We also walked a bit around Santa Cruz and took more pics, everything picturesque.

We then tried to visit a couple more windmills, but it was five minutes later and the weather had changed, with sideways rain. We decided we already had enough pics of windmills.

We drove back to the bnb, waited five minutes in the car and it was sunny again.

We relaxed the rest of the day. The charcuterie was so-so, we were still full from our big lunch so it was okay. We meant to get a start on packing but figured we’d have time in the morning.

Graciosa Island, Azores

We had a transit day to get from Terceira to Graciosa, the last destination on this trip before we head back home. Our flight wasn’t until 12:20 so we had time for a relaxing breakfast before checking out at 11am. Returning the car was easy too, we just had to find an empty spot in the parking lot (P1 was full so went to P5) and then leave the keys in the car.

It was only a 30 minute flight, once again we chose our seats poorly and the view was on the other side.

Graciosa opened a new terminal building just a few months ago, and it looked very modern, with standard signage in Helvetica font. It’s still a small airport, with just the one conveyor belt.

We met the car rental folks in arrivals, and picked up our last rental of the trip, a Citroën C3. Graciosa is a small island, 10km by 7km. Its population is about 4,000, roughly the same as Flores.

We drove to our bnb, Portas do Ilhéu, and were welcomed by the caretaker, Isabel. She was really nice. We were right on the ocean, with the waves crashing on the rocks just 10m away. Normally we don’t like being so close to sea level, in case of earthquakes and tsunamis. We had booked so long ago I forget our reasoning for picking it.

We rushed out to have a bite for lunch, as it was nearing 2pm and we had dinner reservations at 8pm. We had some cheese sandwiches in a little cafe in the nearby village of Praia.

The weather changed even more frequently here. It went from sunny to pouring rain and then back every five minutes. We had started to walk around Praia but the weather was just too inconsistent. Instead just went to the local market and picked up water and some after dinner drinks.

We sorted ourselves out in the bnb. It had a loft area above the main living area with a big window to watch the waves. There must have been a reef or something in front, cause the waves were huge, maybe 10-15 feet high.

Later we went for dinner at Costa do sol by-the-sea (they have a sister restaurant in the capital). It was a cosy restaurant, overlooking the harbour. We split a bunch of dishes: Azorean cheese with honey, grilled lapas, grilled catch-of-the-day, and finally grilled steak local style (served with a fried egg on top). We had a chocolate brownie and espressos for dessert. It was all excellent.

Terceira Island, Azores

We drove into Angra do Heroísmo this morning. Historically, it’s the most important city in the Azores. According to Wikipedia, its official name is “Very Noble, Loyal and Ever Steadfast City of Angra do Heroísmo”, but it also goes by just Angra. It was hit by a major earthquake in 1980, was rebuilt and became a UNESCO site a few years later. It now looks amazing, one of the prettiest cities I’ve seen. It’s a small city with a population of only 35,000.

We started at the Fortress of St. John of Monte Brasil. We parked on the outskirts of the centre, cause it looked like paid parking in the core.

You can only see the Fortress from outside the walls, but it’s still a nice walk and interesting to see. Plus there’s good views of Angra from Mt Brasil.

We then walked around the cute little streets around the harbour. It looked like the same cruise ship we had seen in Flores was now docked here in Terceira.

We found a cafe for lunch, which was very popular with locals. We were lucky and got one of the last tables. Their brunch menu was really good.

We then walked down the main street towards the Museu de Angra do Heroísmo (MAH). Along the way we passed by the Cathedral of Angra and stopped in to visit.

The MAH was a really good museum. It had the historical context of Angra as you’d expect, but also had some art exhibits, and a former church restored. The church was more impressive than the cathedral we had just visited!

On the upper floor of the museum, we could hear the pipe organ in the church, and I wondered if it was a recording. It turned out that it was actually being played! I googled after, and the organ was built in 1788 by António Xavier Machado Cerveira, one of the leading Portuguese organ builders. The organist was the museum’s resident organist, Gustaaf van Manen. It was quite the treat to hear it being played. We had tried in Mexico City to attend a performance in the main cathedral but had a mix up. Here we got to hear it and it wasn’t even planned!

Anyways it took us about two hours to get through the MAH. It was almost 4pm by this point, so we walked back to our car in the on-again off-again rain, drove back and got ready for dinner. We had booked Restaurante Doze Ribeiras, the same place we ate at a couple days ago. It was excellent again, we were glad to have booked it.

Terceira Island, Azores

I had planned out activities for Day 1 in Terceira back in summer 2025: Gruta do Natal, Algar do Carvão, and Furnas do Enxofre. I no longer remembered what these were about, so we had to look them up again. The internet called the overpriced and underwhelming. The weather was iffy, 14C with feels-like of 3C due to high winds, and chance of rain. Yikes. The day was not looking promising.

We layered up and headed out into the weather. First up was Furnas do Enxofre. This was a little trail around sulphur vents. We’ve seen geothermal parks in other places, most recently in New Zealand. The trail here was lined on both sides with wooden railings. These prevent people from walking off-piste and stepping into a vent; on windy days like today, it also helped to keep us from being blown off the trail. The loop was longer than it first appeared. It took us about 30 minutes to walk around. There’s no bubbling fumaroles, just steam escaping from vents. The high winds minimized the sulphur smell. There’s unique vegetation and some good signage explaining everything. It was interesting to see, and free to visit.

Next up was Algar do Carvão, an ancient volcanic vent. Unfortunately it was only open for limited hours (14:30 - 17:30) due to construction.

We looked at the map to figure out something else to do. There was a walking trail to a miradouro overlooking Angra but we couldn’t find the trailhead. It was getting closer to lunch, so we decided to skip the trail and just go eat.

I had picked out a nearby restaurant (Bota Que Tem) on Google Maps. It turned out to be a popular lunch spot for locals. It was buffet-style, but the idea was more around self-serve rather than all-you-can-eat. We had the soup (potato I think) and then ribs / grilled chicken / grilled sardines. It was really good, and we didn’t overeat. We had an espresso to finish.

We then walked around the neighbourhood (Posto Santo) which was quite cute.

We drove back to Algar do Carvão. It was just after 2pm, and there were about five other cars already there, waiting for 2:30. We parked in line and waited too.

The fence opened right at 2:30, and we all streamed in on the access road. We bought our ticket (9 EUR) and entered the park.

We could see the new welcome centre under construction. There’s now a tunnel that deposits you about half way down the volcanic vent. There’s then stairs the rest of the way down. The inside drips water constantly, which we had read about and worn our rain jackets.

We thought that was it, just a big hole in the ground. But there was more! Another set of stairs took us down near the lagoon at the bottom, and another set of stairs into another large chamber. The whole cavern system is subtly lit, so that you can get a sense of the scale. Wikipedia has a good pic of the layout. There were interesting stalactites hanging from the ceiling, looking like chandeliers.

Anyways we really liked the cavern and thought it was well worth the cost of admission. Not sure about all those negative reviews on Google Maps. Maybe it was earlier in construction and there wasn’t much open yet?

Next up was Gruta do Natal, a 697m long lava tube. This was way better than the one we saw in Pico. There’s lots of signage explaining all the different geological formations. We liked this as much as Algar do Carvão.

Overall the three volcano-related sites we saw today were really interesting. We were lucky with weather too, as we avoided the big downpours.

We took the long way home around the northwest corner of Terceira. There’s some cool miradouros. We also checked out Farol da Serreta, a lighthouse.

Later we went for dinner, at a restaurant that supposedly had good grilled beef. It was just okay.

Terceira Island, Azores

Our flight schedule from Flores to Terceira via Horta looked much better when I booked it back in June 2025. But as is common on smaller regional airlines, the flight schedules for the fleet were optimized closer to the date, and so we ended up with a five hour layover in Horta. (The flights themselves are only 50 minutes and 40 minutes respectively).

We packed up from our bnb in Flores, one of our favourite places on this trip. I topped up the tank at the gas station just across from the airport, and then we returned the car and checked in for the flight. The carry-on suitcase weighed 8.1 kg, but the agent didn’t mind, and checked it for free. Our flight wasn’t until 11:15 and the agent suggested we go through security around 10:35. We had about 40 minutes to kill so we walked back out of the airport and down to the waterfront (it’s a small airport).

There was a cruise ship visiting Flores today, the Hanseatic Nature, with 230 passengers. It was too large to dock, so it anchored outside the harbour and sent passengers in via a zodiac. We ran into some of the passengers walking around the waterfront while we waited for security to open for our flight. It didn’t seem like they were getting a good flavour of Flores (the waterfront is not exactly a highlight here), but I guess to each their own.

Anyways walked back to the airport and went through security. The captain of our adventurous boat ride from Corvo recognized us and said hi (presumably he was there to pick up incoming clients). That reminded me to post reviews for all the folks that helped us that evening, which I did while we waited to board.

It’s only 50 minutes from Flores to Horta. We were on the wrong side of the plane again for pics :(

Most of the folks on the flight were carrying on to Ponta Delgada, leaving just five of us in the terminal waiting for the 16:40 flight to Terceira.

Luckily I had made sandwiches to use up the rest of our charcuterie, as there was just a vending machine in the terminal at Horta. The sandwiches were good, followed with a coffee from the vending machine and some chocolate Heather had bought in Flores.

Finally our flight time rolled around, and we boarded for the 40 minute flight to Terceira. We were on the wrong side yet again for pics :(

Picked up our luggage at the conveyor belt (Corvo was too small for conveyors, they just push the luggage through the floppy rubber flaps like how beer used to be delivered at Brewers Retail stores in the 80s). We looked around for P1 where our rental car was. We walked out the complete opposite end of the airport from P1; oh well, we needed the walk as we’d been pretty sedentary all day.

The keys were in the glove compartment, as well as the rental agreement for me to sign. It was a Dacia Sandero, a very basic model, with no console screen. So no CarPlay and no rear view cam for reversing. Just like my old 89 Honda Civic :) At least all our luggage fit in the trunk.

Our hotel was across the island, 35 minutes away. We checked in, and then got ready for dinner. We had earlier asked the hotel for dinner recommendations, and they had made reservations for us at Restaurante Doze Ribeiras.

It’s a bit of a foodie restaurant. We had the lapas (limpets) in butter garlic sauce which was amazing. Then we had a couple fishes, grilled perfectly in the open kitchen. It was way too much food and very yummy. We even tried their dessert after which was great too.

It was a bit tricky driving back to the hotel in the dark. The roads are very narrow, especially down the smaller roads lined with rock walls. We fell asleep pretty quickly.

Flores Island, Azores

We had a slower day today, the first time in almost a week that we had some down time. I had fallen a few days behind in my blog over this time :( It started with the early flight from Lisbon, the rush to trek up to the caldera in Corvo while the weather was nice, and then unplanned fast boat to Flores. Anyways it was nice to have a relaxing day.

We saw the Atlânticoline ferry come in around 10am. This was the same as the Saturday one that was cancelled due to the high winds. It was small, holding only 16 people. It’s fully enclosed so folks didn’t get wet, but that would also cut down on visibility. When our Saturday ferry was cancelled, I had tried to rebook for today’s (Tuesday) but it was sold out - no wonder, considering it only holds 16.

We got to the Fábrica da Baleia do Boqueirão (Whaling Museum) around 11:15. Google said they closed at noon for lunch but they’re open straight through the day. It cost us 1 EUR each to enter. We had previously seen both the Whalers Museum and the Whaling Industry Museum in Pico which we really liked. The museum here in Flores was a combination of both, housed in a former whaling factory. It was more extensive than I had thought, it took us almost 90 minutes to get through. We really liked it.

We decided to have a big lunch and then just munch on our leftovers for dinner. We ate at the other recommended restaurant in Santa Cruz, O Mergulhador. It was excellent, we liked it better than O Moreão. We split the octopus salad, grilled steak and marrow bone.

We walked around town for a bit after lunch, looking for a souvenir shop, but it was slim pickings.

We checked out the Flores Museum. The history of ship wrecks was interesting, as well as the notable corsairs.

We stopped in at the grocery store to get some fresh buns to make sandwiches for the layover tomorrow. The supply ship (or plane) must have just come in - the fruits and vegetables were fully stocked. We saw the owner from O Moreão stocking up. She recognized us and said hi.

We got back to our bnb around 4:30pm and relaxed the rest of the afternoon. I mostly caught up in my blog. Later we packed up a bit, getting ready for the flight tomorrow. Our suitcases were disorganized after the mad rush to pack and catch the fast boat from Corvo. I had taken a pic of the 7.9kg contents of the carry-on suitcase so we could repack it. Heather’s cottonballs were now in her big suitcase so I swapped in her gloves. Hopefully that won’t push it over.

Flores Island, Azores

May the fourth be with you! We had a slow start to the morning, enjoying the nice sunny day. It was the clearest view we’ve had of Corvo since we arrived here in Flores.

We saw a fast ferry arrive in Flores, the first boat crossing since the windstorm dissipated. Their captain was not anywhere near as good as ours, you could actually hear the thump-thump-thump as they crested waves. They had a tarp over the windward side of the boat, which probably kept them dry, but blocked half the view. We would have got seasick.

We finally got our day underway around 11am. First up was the cheese factory / museum across the island, in Fajãzinha (population 71). The cheese factory is down some pretty narrow streets on the edge of town.

Turns out the only thing available to the public is a small fridge selling two kinds of cheese. Not sure why it’s so hyped up on Google Maps. Even the tourist info folks had suggested we check it out.

That was really the only thing we had planned, so now we had some time on our hands. Walked around Fajãzinha and took some pics, it’s a cute little place. After we saw the parking lot outside town and realized we were supposed to park there and then explore the town on foot.

We drove down to Igreja de Nossa Senhora Do Carmo, on the outskirts of Fajã Grande. I had taken a bunch of pics of the church from afar a couple days ago. The road leading to the church was fairly level and picturesque, so we decided to have lunch and then park and revisit the church again on foot.

We went to the same lunch spot as the first day in. We were there at 1pm, and our lunch order was queued up behind all the other tables. We only got our food around 2pm. We tried their breaded shrimp, which was good, but we’re probably done with deep fried food for a while.

After we parked at the trailhead (so to speak), and walked along the road to the church. There’s numerous waterfalls visible along the way. They fall from 600m cliffs, and the flow is low so about half way down they disappear into mist. It wasn’t that long of a walk (only about 2km) but it was nice.

We did not feel like waiting for food for dinner, so instead decided to get some charcuterie from the local grocery store and just have dinner at our bnb. I also got a bottle of Pico wine, which we really enjoyed back in 2019. The vineyards are a UNESCO site and the wine has a slight hint of sea salt. Anyways I took the opportunity to try it again.

The views were beautiful from our bnb on the hill as the sun went down. It was a nice relaxing end to the day.

Flores Island, Azores

It was another windy day, with bigger waves than yesterday out on the Atlantic. We had a relaxing breakfast in our bnb. I made up some scrambled eggs, along with local cheeses, bread and pineapple jam. Mmm good.

Just like yesterday, it was mostly sunny, just really windy, which was fine for sightseeing and pics.

Today’s road trip started at Farol de Albarnaz, a lighthouse just past Ponta Delgada on the north end of Flores. From there you can see Monchique Islet, supposedly the westernmost point in Europe. It sits on the North American tectonic plate, so it’s more of a marketing claim than anything.

We had lunch at Flor de Lótus, a permanent food truck just outside Ponta Delgada. It was just what we were looking for. Heather had a hotdog which is what I should have ordered too, as I didn’t care for my bifana. We also had onion rings and fries, which were pretty good. Heather couldn’t remember the last time she had a hot dog, lol. Probably at a Jays game.

It was still early in the afternoon, so we decided to try our luck at the Seven Lakes in the interior district of Lajes. It seems like it’s permanently cloudy there, with humid air rising up 700m inland.

First we saw Caldeira Branca. The lake was just beneath the cloud cover, enough that we had a full view. It was really windy though, not as bad as Iceland windy, but still pretty strong.

Next up was Caldeira Seca, which as the name suggests is a dry lake. This was less photogenic. Caldeiras Negra and Comprida were a combined miradouro, and the windiest of the bunch.

The next caldeiras were down the road a few minutes. We saw the same tourists at each of them, doing the same route. Caldeiras Funda and Rasa were also a joint miradouro.

Along the way to Caldeira da Lomba, we passed by another miradouro for Caldeiras Funda and Rasa, this time from a distance. The difference in elevation (Rasa 530m, Funda 360m) is striking, which we didn’t notice at the previous miradouro which sits between them.

Caldeira da Lomba was a bit of a dud, there’s not even signage like the other caldeiras. Oh well. The other six were cool to see, although they look better in person than in pics.

Almost all the restaurants in Flores are closed on Sundays. The only options were burger places and a Chinese restaurant, Restaurante Macau. After the hotdog and onion rings lunch, we didn’t feel like a burger, so opted for Restaurante Macau.

The reviews on Google said there was a long wait for food on Sundays (cause everyone in town is eating there), so we decided to head there at 6pm to get takeout, and then reheat it later in the evening at our bnb.

The kitchen didn’t open until 6:30pm, so we chatted with the person (the son of the family-run restaurant) and placed a takeout order for 7pm. They use locally sourced ingredients so we weren’t expecting authentic Cantonese. We did go off-menu and order a vegetable stir fry.

We had an hour to wait, and rather than drive back to the bnb and then back to the restaurant, we just walked around Santa Cruz. We hadn’t done much walking today, so it was good to get in our steps.

We drove to the south end of town and parked in the lot. We’ve realized that each of the towns has a designated parking area for tourists from which you can then explore on foot. It’s a great idea, although the car rental companies should mention it!

We took a bunch of pics of the Church of Santa Cruz das Flores which towers over the town. We then walked over to Parque Boavista. There’s cool views of the town over the harbour from the park. It also has a skateboard park (so did Corvo, a brand new one!).

It was getting close to 7pm so we got back to the car. We stopped a few times to get pics of street art of birds on various walls and buildings. Later I googled and most of the street art is by Morgan Bricca.

Restaurante Macau was bustling when we returned. Heather went in to get our take-out, while I waited in the car, illegally parked as the lot was full.

The food was pretty good, and went well with Sagres (the local beer). It was a decent option for a Sunday, plus we got to watch the sunset. There’s not much colour cause we’re on the east side of the island, but it was still nice to see night approach from up on our hill.

Flores Island, Azores

I didn’t sleep very well last night cause we were still hopped up on adrenaline from the crazy boat ride to Flores.

Our bnb is up top of a hill with a great view of the town of Santa Cruz and the Atlantic Ocean. We could see the whitecaps and big waves, it’s no wonder there’s no boat crossings today.

First up was some admin stuff. Our driver from yesterday met us at 10:45 to drive us to the car rental pickup at the airport in Santa Cruz. The Ilha Verde folks were very quick. In the meantime, Heather dropped into the Info booth and got some good tips on seeing the island. Aside from the big winds, there was good visibility and it was a good day to tour around Flores, per the info lady.

We then stopped into a little cafe for breakfast. Breakfast isn’t much of a thing here, so we just had a cappuccino and bread with cheese, enough to keep us going. We then stopped into the local supermarket, Helios, to stock up on breakfast supplies for the next few days.

We drove back up to our bnb to get ourselves situated. The rental was a Renault Clio, a fun little car to drive. CarPlay worked well with the car.

We cut across the island on the ER2-2 towards Fajã Grande (there’s only two major roads in Flores, ER1-2 which circumnavigates the island from 12 o’clock to 9; and ER2-2 which goes straight from 9 o’clock to 3). We stopped at a few miradouros (lookout points) to take pics.

We had lunch at an ocean-side little restaurant and had bifanas, the best ones we’ve had this trip. We got there around 2:05 and the kitchen closed at 2pm but luckily they still served us.

Then we did a little more driving around and sightseeing. The area around Fajã Grande is surrounded by 600m cliffs, from which dozens of waterfalls make their way down. There’s lots of hikes in and around the area, although a bit technical cause of the extreme up-and-downs. The hikes are all rated difficult on AllTrails. However, there’s lots of miradouros accessible from the road, which is what we did.

We took the long way home, circling south through Lajes das Flores. Along the way we passed by Rocha dos Bordões, basalt rocks shaped like pipe organs. We’ve seen these in different countries, most recently in Iceland.

There’s a beautiful tiled church in Fazenda which we made a detour to get some pics.

We stopped at a few more miradouros on the way back to the bnb.

We didn’t have much time to relax as we wanted to get to Restaurante O Moreão for dinner. It was one of the few restaurants open this early in the season, and was packed. We waited 10 minutes to get seated, and then over an hour for our food. The restaurant only seats about 30 people, of which 20 were taken up by a group. We got stuck behind the group in our food orders, thus the wait. We had grilled squid skewers and grilled swordfish, both of which were excellent.

It was past 10pm by the time we got home, and we fell fast asleep.

Flores Island, Azores

We woke up a bit sore from the 14km walk up and down from the caldera (550m) in Corvo yesterday. Looked like today would just be on as level ground as possible.

It was pretty crowded at the breakfast area in the hotel, with about a dozen other guests.

After breakfast we checked in with reception, to see about boats to Flores on Sunday. Originally I had planned for us to take the ferry, but it’s still early in the season and it only ran Sat-Tue-Thu. It didn’t look good for the fast boats either, as they originate in Flores and are typically used by day trippers to Corvo.

We also were running out of things to do in Corvo. There are a couple more treks we could have done, if we were younger and didn’t wreck our knees / ankles etc on the first day’s trek up to the caldera.

So we decided to cut our time short in Corvo, and leave a day earlier on the Saturday ferry. Luckily our place in Flores was available for the extra day too. I was able to book the ferry online. The 9am ferry was sold out but we got tickets for the 4pm one. (I also hadn’t realized when planning that the ferry could sell out). I also called the car rental folks at Ilha Verde and our car was available early too.

With our revised itinerary sorted out, we started touring around Vila do Corvo. Most of the things we wanted to see were around the runway, with limited elevation changes. Good for our knees and ankles.

First up was an art installation by Bordalo II. He is known for his murals made from recycled trash. Near the west end of the runway, there’s an image of a grouper on the side of a beached boat. It’s somewhat hidden unless you’re actually looking for it. (Or you can just go to Google Maps like us, which is how I found out about it). It was pretty cool. He has another installation in Corvo on the outside the Community Sports Centre which we saw yesterday.

Around the south side of the runway are a three moinhos (windmills), so we took some pics.

We went back to BBC for lunch, and tried their bifanas. These were okay, we preferred the special yesterday. After lunch we wandered through the old cobblestone streets overlooking the docks. The streets rise sharply from the water up the slopes of the faja. It’s very picturesque. The steep streets weren’t helping our joints though.

We watched a fast boat loading passengers in the harbour. It was bobbing up and down in the waves, making it hard to embark. We then watched them boucing around as they left the harbour. We were glad we had booked on the ferry, and not the fast boat.

We got back to our hotel just in time for me to get an alert from the ferry company that tomorrow’s (Saturday) ferry was cancelled due to high winds :(

This did not bode well. We looked at other options to get off Corvo. The next flight with availability was leaving in a week’s time, the next ferry on Tuesday was already sold out, and the fast boats weren’t running for at least a couple days due to the high winds. We could be stuck on Corvo for a week! :( Also, there was a dance festival in Corvo the next three days and all the (limited) accommodation on the island was sold out. So we could be stuck with no place to stay :(

We reached out to anyone we knew in Corvo. The restaurant folks from yesterday suggested a boat person based in Flores. I sent them a WhatsApp, and they were willing to pick us up this evening if we bought out all the seats on the boat. The cost was not much more than flying, and would get us to Flores before the storm hit and shut down all transport for at least a couple days, so we agreed.

We rushed to pack up in less than an hour and were at the dock by 6pm. The winds had already picked up and it wasn’t guaranteed that the captain would make it from Flores to Corvo if he decided the weather was already too risky.

The nice folks from the restaurant (who had recommended the boat folks and were good friends with them) came down to the dock to wait with us and make sure we connected.

The boat rounded the corner into the loosely protected harbour, where the waves were over five feet high. I was nervous about loading our suitcases on to the bobbing boat, but the captain was excellent and everything was loaded safely.

We were just about to board ourselves when the couple that sat in front of us on the plane to Corvo ran up to the dock. It was obvious from the looks on their faces that they were in the same boat as us (ha ha), facing the option of being stuck on Corvo for a week. They asked if they could join us, and the captain said if they could be ready in fifteen minutes he’d wait. So they rushed off and packed and were back in less than ten minutes (very impressive).

And then we were off! It’s 21km to Flores, and it took us about an hour. The waves out in the open ocean were about 20 feet high. Our boat felt tiny in comparison. The captain was excellent, navigating through the waves without thumping. The seats were optimal too - it was like straddling a pommel horse with a seat back. We had a full view of the horizon, and never felt seasick at all, which was great. The winds were up to 40km/h blowing into my side of the boat, and I was soaked. We had dressed to get wet, with all our base layers. So I was wet but not cold. Heather had gloves but I didn’t, and my hands were freezing by the time we crossed. (It was about 14C, not sure of the wind chill). It started raining about half way through, which hurt like sleet in our faces. Luckily we knew enough to have worn our sunglasses, so that we could keep our eyes open to the horizon.

Anyways it was quite the adventure to get across. We finally got to the harbour in Flores, which was better protected from waves. We disembarked and unloaded our suitcases with frozen hands. The boat folks had connected us with a transport service, so we had a ride to our hotel.

The taxi guy was really nice too. It was too late to get in anywhere later to eat dinner, but one of his friends was the chef at a popular restaurant. So our taxi guy called his chef friend and arranged for take out to be picked up in an hour. We got dropped off at our hotel (really a bnb) and changed into dry clothes (I was soaked in salty water so had a shower too). Our driver came back in an hour and drove us to pick up our food.

It was hard to believe that a few hours ago we were looking at being stuck in Corvo for a week with no place to stay, and then through the kindness of the restaurant folks, the boat folks, the taxi guy, and the chef friend, we were now eating a fancy dinner in our bnb in Flores.

Corvo Island, Azores

We had our alarms set for 3:30am to catch our 6am flight to the Azores. We had arrived at the hotel at 2am yesterday, so we paid for two nights but were only in the hotel for 26 hours :(

Caught our scheduled Bolt at 4am, got to the airport and checked in. The TAP check-in was a zoo; we were flying Azores Airlines which had no one in line. We also had Fast Track on our tickets so skipped the security lineups too. It was almost like we were flying business!

We slept through most of the 2.5 hour flight to San Miguel. We had a 45 minute layover during which we had our 2nd cappuccino of the day.

Then we took a small 48-seater to Horta, on the island of Faial. We visited Faial on our 2019 trip and really liked it. Our visit this time was much shorter, just 20 minutes while the plane refueled. The passengers on the right side of the plane had an amazing view of Faial on the approach to Horta. We were on the left side, seats 6A and 6B. The person in the window seat on the right side (6D) had videoed the approach, and I asked him after if he could share it. He airdropped it to me, I’ve posted it unlisted on YouTube.

There were only about ten of us on the flight to Corvo. It’s a small island, population 435, and has only one hotel with about 16 rooms. There’s also a few bnb’s, but overall there’s not much accommodation for tourists. Most tourists visit as a day trip from nearby Flores Island, a 21km ferry.

I had wanted a pic of the approach to Corvo, as it’s quite stunning with the little town of Vila do Corvo on a fajã. But we flew on a direct approach without a fly-by, so there were no pics to be had from either side of the plane.

It started raining as we deplaned. By the time we got our luggage, it had turned into a downpour. We all dug into our packs to find our raincoats.

There’s no taxis (it’s a small island). We waited for the rain to slow down, and then walked out from the airport towards our hotel. It’s only a nine-minute walk, which wouldn’t have been a big deal if it wasn’t raining.

By the time we reached the hotel, it was sunny again, typical of island weather. We were able to check in (it was only 11am).

We ventured out for lunch. There’s only one place in town open for lunch, the BBC restaurant (nothing to do with British TV). We had their special, beans and chorizo with rice, which was excellent. We had an espresso after to keep us awake. (There's also a buffet restaurant near the airport that's open for lunch, but it gets only a 3.9 on Google Maps).

It had turned into a beautiful day. All the locals we spoke with said we should visit the caldera today, as the next few days the weather was turning and it would be unlikely we’d seen anything cause the caldera would be covered with clouds.

So we changed into our hiking gear and packed for three seasons - cold, rain, and heat.

It’s about 700m elevation gain from sea level to the entrance to the caldera. It took us about 2.5 hours to walk up cause it’s super photogenic and we stopped a lot for pics. It might have been a 1.5 walk if we didn’t stop.

There’s beautiful views of rock-terraced farmland and the ocean and old basalt buldings and green fields and blue sky. There’s even an old chapel built into the hill, and new wind turbines too. We did go through all the variations of clothing along the way.

We reached the top, already impressed by the views on the way up, and then had a look into the caldera. This was even more impressive, the best caldera I’ve seen. It’s possible to walk down and around the inside, but for us, the view was the thing. We sat on a rock and just took in the view for about half an hour.

The walk down was beautiful too, but not so nice on our knees and ankles. We were a bit sore by the time we reached our hotel. Probably, we’ll be even worse tomorrow.

We had dinner at Restaurante Irmãos Metralha. I had emailed them a week ago to pre-order, as you can’t just show up for dinner (they buy the ingredients on a just-in-time basis).

Dinner was excellent, two types of fish, blackspot sea bream and veja. Both were cooked and seasoned perfectly. We chatted with the owner, he was really friendly and genuine.

It was a long day and we weren’t expecting to see the caldera today, but you have to take advantage of the weather when it’s nice.

Lisbon, Portugal

We slept in a bit as the breakfast hours at our hotel were rather broad. We’re staying at the 1908 Lisboa Hotel, a hipster kind of place in the gentrifying neighbourhood of Intendente.

We didn’t have any sightseeing planned here, as we’ve been through Lisbon a couple times before, in 2010 and 2019. The only plans we had were to find a self-serve laundromat, and eat yummy food.

We took our laundry to Laundry Self Service Ideal. The lady there was super helpful, and an hour later we had a bag full of clean clothes. The spin got them pretty dry too, they would finish hang drying before we packed up for the Azores.

We had a bit of a shock at the changes in Lisbon and how tourism-focused it’s now become. There were six-seater tuktuks everywhere, carting around their cruise ship passengers like sedentary folks out of WALL-E. Lisbon still maintains its charm, but it was disillusioning to us. We had bifanas for lunch at a random little place that were excellent. We didn’t want a big lunch cause we had planned a big dinner, and the bifanas hit the spot.

Later we had dinner at Sacco, a little restaurant about five minutes from the hotel. It was really good. We chatted with the owners who also commented on the exponential growth of tuktuks in Lisbon.

We finished the night in our hotel bar, having a beer and non-alcoholic cocktail with our welcome-drink tickets.

Lisbon, Portugal

We had a travel day, flying from Malta to Lisbon via Zürich. They’re all Schengen countries, which with the new biometric entrance and exit requirements, is of more significance. It will be part of future trip planning for sure.

Zürich Airport (ZRH) is totally calm for an international airport. The flight announcements sounded like a meditation Swiss Air flight 182 is now boarding at gate 2. When you realize there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs to you. Or something like that.

We also used the lounge access benefit on my credit card, now that I was aware that I had this benefit. It wasn’t as nice as the free lounge in Istanbul, but hey, free food.

We arrived in Lisbon just before midnight, and lost our ZRH zen in the chaos of the ride-hailing app pickup zone. There must have been over a hundred people waiting for their Bolt (the European version of Uber).

We arrived at our hotel around 2am. With the hour gained (we were now GMT +0) it felt like 3am.

Mosta, Malta

We tried to take the bus to Mdina today, but we were getting conflicting routes from the Malta bus website between Heather’s and my phone. We ended up just taking a Bolt, which was just about the same cost as two transit fares, and much quicker.

Mdina is fairly close to Mosta, about a ten minute drive. It’s a walled city, sitting on a plateau overlooking the rest of the island. It’s supposedly very atmospheric with no cars allowed. It may have been like that before mass tourism reached here; now it’s overflowing with tourists and horse-drawn carriages (and enough vehicles that you need to beware of cars). It’s filled with souvenir shops and restaurants catering to large groups. Just not our thing.

We did get tickets to the cathedral and associated museum. The 15 EUR ticket may have helped reduce the crowds, as it was pleasant to visit both.

This morning I had woken up with my phone screen on the fritz again, and it got progressively worse throughout the morning. I had my camera so just used that for pics.

We had lunch at a small restaurant just outside the city walls. We sat at a shaded table on the stairs, with an amazing view of Valletta and the Mediterranean in the distance. We had a full lunch over the next couple hours. So the day trip was a success after all :)

We used Heather’s phone to get a Bolt back to Mosta. There was a phone repair shop about 100m down the street from our hotel. They said it was my screen again, and probably related to another bump rather than a poor repair job by the previous folks. I suspect that I may have damaged more than the screen.

We fly out tomorrow, but they said they could fix it this afternoon. It would just cost a bit more to have the part express delivered. Hopefully this will last me until we get home, when I’ll just get a new iPhone. Unrelated, they had a cute little dog that took a liking to Heather.

We walked down to the Mosta Rotunda. More formally called the Sanctuary Basilica of the Assumption of Our Lady, it’s the 3rd largest unsupported dome in world. ^{[citation needed]}. It took a direct hit from a German bomb in WWII but the bomb didn’t explode. You can still see the tiles in the ceiling where the bomb went through, and the cracked floor where it landed.

It’s possible to climb up to the clock tower and view the interior of the dome. There’s a replica of the bomb in the church museum, and the ticket also includes a visit to the WWII bomb shelters under the church. Pretty good deal for 5 EUR! It’s a popular day trip for folks staying in Valletta; we had it pretty much to ourselves at 5pm.

Got back to the phone repair shop just after 6pm. My phone was ready, and working once again. Hopefully it will last two more weeks, as it’s doubtful I’ll find any tech repair shops on the smaller islands in the Azores.

We were still full from dinner, so just called it a day. Our flight’s not till 2:20pm tomorrow, so we didn’t need to do any pre-packing tonight.

Mosta, Malta

We headed back into Valletta this morning. Now that we knew the drill for catching the bus it was pretty easy. Traffic was non-existent on a Sunday morning, it took us less than 25 minutes to get to Valletta.

There was a parade or procession in progress. It entered the city gates and went down the main street. That’s the only way into Valletta, so we had to cut through the parade a couple times to get into the city.

There were hardly any tourists in Valletta today. On Sundays, the cathedral is closed to visitors, which is one of the main draws. Also there were no cruise ships in port today. Saturday and Monday there were over 3,000 passengers in port, most of them visiting Valletta.

Fort St Elmo and the National War Museum (a joint ticket) are at the opposite end of the city from the bus terminal, about a 20 minute walk. We bought our tickets and checked out the gift shop. Heather saw they actually had mini door knockers, one of the souvenirs I was looking for for the key shelf. Cool!

First we explored the Fort, taking our tourist-less pics in case more tourists showed up later (spoiler, they didn’t). There’s really good views of the surrounding area, including looking back at the city, and of the three cities across the harbour.

Then we retraced our steps and went through the War History museum. The museum is laid out in seven rooms throughout the Fort. It’s really well done. I was ignorant about the history of Malta until this trip. Over the centuries, Malta has been ruled by the Phoenicians, Romans, Arabs, and the Knights of St. John. More recently it was part of the British Empire (thus the left side drive) and gained independence in 1964. Malta had huge strategic importance in WWII (in fact, it’s been of strategic importance throughout history).

Anyways it took us a while to get through all that history. It’s neat that on this trip we’ve seen the story of the same civilizations but from different contexts.

We then walked over to the ferry terminal to get to the three cities across the harbour. The ferry was about to leave and in the confusion I accidentally bought tickets to Gozo. Fortunately we realized the mistake before we boarded; so it just cost us some money but not time.

We found the line for the gondolas to get across the harbour, and in a couple minutes we were on our way.

The gondola ride (3 EUR each) was really relaxing. The harbour is really protected and the water was super smooth. It’s a motorized ride except for the docking where they use oars.

The gondola lands in Vittoriosa. We walked 20 minutes around the marina to Senglea, where the better restaurants were waterside.

We actually sat inside cause it was only 20C and chilly in the wind. We still had a beautiful view of Vittoriosa though. We made this our big meal of the day, splitting an appetizer, pasta and main. It was really good.

We then explored up and down the streets of both Senglea and Vittoriosa. We really enjoyed this - there were hardly any other tourists here today.

Finally around 5pm we caught another relaxing gondola ride back to Valletta, and then a bus back to Mosta. We were both glad we decided to spend another day in Valletta and surrounds, it was a super enjoyable day. We could definitely see why Malta is such an attraction for folks.

Mosta, Malta

We took the bus into Valletta this morning. We had to think about the last time we used public transit - we think it was in Fiji, when we took the bus from Savu Savu to the ferry to Taveuni.

Malta has a pretty decent bus system. They have a good website too, to help figure out what bus to catch. Also, they have free wifi on the bus!

We caught the bus about 100m down the street from our hotel. The bus terminal in Valletta is just outside the city walls. The entire city is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, about 500 years old. It’s also a working city, with a population of about 5,000.

There was a cruise ship in port, and the streets in Valletta were bustling. We walked down the pedestrian Republic St, the main shopping street in Valletta. The volume of tourists wasn’t the shock to us that we had expected - the city is still amazing with the crowds.

We made our way towards St. John's Co-Cathedral, one of the main tourist attractions. I had bought tickets online a couple days ago. There was a long lineup (maybe fifteen minutes?) for those buying tickets onsite; whereas we just walked right in with our online tickets. I don’t know why more folks don’t buy their tickets online? Maybe they don’t know.

Anyways so we strolled right on in. It wasn’t too busy yet at 11am, we were able to get pics where we wanted without getting jostled about.

I also had to look up the definition of co-cathedral. So all my life I had thought a cathedral was an architectural term, meaning big church or something like that. In fact it’s a religious term, used for a church that is the seat of the bishop. A co-cathedral is when the bishop’s seat is shared amongst multiple locations, typically when an older cathedral is replaced with a newer one, but both still exist. Who knew?

St John’s is definitely worth the visit. According to Wikipedia, it’s one of the finest examples of high Baroque architecture in Europe. Amongst the artwork is Caravaggio’s masterpiece ‘The Martyrdom of St John the Baptist’, the only painting he signed.

It’s also possible to buy an additional ticket to climb the tower, but we couldn’t figure out the process.

After St John’s, we walked a little further down to the Grand Master's Palace and Palace Armoury, which is a combined ticket. There’s an elaborate security process after which we had to check our bags (as opposed to St John’s, where there was no security at all).

There’s a self-guided tour through the various rooms and things to see. It’s very extensive, it took us over 90 minutes to see it. The armoury in particular is amazing, and I’m not even into armoury.

It was mid afternoon and we were hungry. Made our way to the restaurants on the steps of St Lucia’s St, as recommended by our hotel. It was crazy busy at the restaurants closest to St Paul St. We stepped down to the restaurants near Triq Sant’ Orsia and were able to get seated at Koccio. We split the fish carpaccio, and then each had a sandwich. Heather had a meatball sandwich which was huge, and I had the mortadella with buffalo mozzarella. Both sandwiches were huge and tasty. Probably more than we wanted to eat but it was good.

After lunch we walked towards Upper Barrakka for the views over the harbour. We actually went to the Saluting Battery, just a level below. Once again we timed a visit perfectly. We got there around 3:55pm, just in time for the 4pm firing of the cannon.

We were feeling a bit drained after walking around in the sun all day, so sorted out how to catch the bus back to Mosta, and called it a day. With the big late afternoon lunch, we didn’t need dinner.

We only got through half of the things we wanted to see in Valletta, so decided to head back again tomorrow.

Mosta, Malta

We had a direct flight from Belgrade to Malta on Air Serbia. It only cost about 80 EUR, and the cheap direct flight was one of the reasons we ended up choosing Belgrade for our revised itinerary.

The flight was at 11:40am, so we had lots of time for breakfast and packing up. I had booked our airport transfer through the hotel cause it wasn’t that much more than a taxi. We also did a pretty good job of spending our last Serbian dinars, reserving enough to tip the driver.

(The rest of the trip is in the eurozone, and we don’t mind having extra Euros at the end of the trip.)

Our carry-on suitcase was packed with the same items as the previous flight, weighing 7.9kg. We were able to check it at the counter. The saga of our carry-on suitcase will continue right through the Azores. For our flight home we’re allowed two checked bags each, so it’s really just the inter-island flights in the Azores that we have left to sort out.

The flight was uneventful until we got close to Malta and we got in a holding pattern. The pilot gave an announcement that the airport was closed for about ten minutes, and then we’d land. Typically this means there’s a military plane taking off or landing, although I did have flashbacks to our Kars flight being rerouted.

We did land in Malta (phew). It’s a small airport, the plane just pulled up to the terminal, and we walked from the plane to arrivals. No Cobus 3000 here.

We got through the new EU biometric stuff quickly, got our luggage and then sorted out where to wait for an Uber. There were at least a half dozen stag and doe groups waiting for their Uber / Bolt van pickup. Mostly these groups stay in the capital, Valletta. Our hotel was in Mosta, about mid-island and 30 minutes from Valletta.

It took a while for our Uber to arrive (Bolt is more popular, I’ll have to download that app later) but our driver was good. I hadn’t realized that Malta drives on the left - I should have rented a car here! (by chance, 10 of 13 countries we’ve rented cars have been left-side drive). After our drive to the hotel, I was glad we didn’t - it’s constant traffic (it’s basically one big urban spread from the airport to Mosta) and there’s nowhere to park.

Our hotel is a small boutique hotel. I had been WhatsApp’ing with the owner and they were expecting us. We had a coffee and chatted with Carmen and met their two friendly dogs.

We’re here for four nights so unpacked and spread out a bit more. I picked up some water and snacks from the convenience store next door (walnuts & bananas) as we our lunch on the flight was just a bag of pretzels.

Later we went for dinner at San Remo’s, a local restaurant recommended by Carmen. She had made reservations for us as it was a Friday night and super busy. She mentioned that some other guests (‘the Italians’, per Carmen, I wonder if she refers to us as ‘the Canadians’) had also later asked for reservations but she couldn’t get them in tonight.

The food was amazing. We tried some Maltese specialties. We split the snails in a pepper broth, and then for mains Heather had the half rabbit with peas, and I had the grilled octopus. We over-ate and went for a walk around the alleys in Mosta after dinner, and also checked out the Mosta rotunda in the main square.

Belgrade, Sofia

Yesterday we had checked off most of the things we wanted to see here in Belgrade. It was another beautiful day, so just wandering around the city today sounded good to us.

The one thing on our list was seeing the Museum of Contemporary Art. It didn’t open until noon, so we had a couple hours to wander :)

We started at the Zeleni Venac Farmer's Market. It was okay, probably not worth going out our way to see it. It was close though to the waterfront along the Sava River which was our next destination. There’s a nice boardwalk that runs along the waterfront around the historic centre. It’s also where the river cruises dock, there was one in port today. We walked along the boardwalk until we could see the confluence of the Sava and Danube. I always find these types of confluences to be anticlimactic.

There’s a bridge and walkway up to the fortress from the cruise terminal. We took it up and then headed into town, to check out an art gallery we had seen yesterday. It didn’t look open, so we walked over to the main pedestrian shopping area looking for souvenirs.

Around 11:30 we headed over towards the Museum of Contemporary Art. It’s across the Sava, in Novi Belgrade. The bridge had separated path for pedestrians and cyclists, which was busier than I would have thought.

Across the Sava, we took a staircase to river level and then walked through Usche Park to the museum.

The current exhibition from the museum’s collection was about the evolution of modern art in Serbia. It was pretty interesting, and extensive.

We spent about 90 minutes checking out the art. For lunch, we went to a food court in a nearby mall. Probably not the healthiest lunch, but we just wanted something different.

By the time we walked back across the bridge and to the hotel, it was nearing 4pm and that was it for our day. We had a coffee and dessert at a nice cafe near the hotel. Later I went back to the restaurant we ate at the first night, and had their pasta with sausage. It was excellent.

Thus ended our itinerary substitution. Tomorrow we fly to Malta and return to our regularly scheduled programming.

Belgrade, Serbia

We were up early-ish, what with the hour we gained. We had one of the better sleeps we’ve had so far on the trip. The bed, pillow and room temperature were all ideal. We found in Türkiye that hotels like to jack up the heat, which we don’t like at night. But here it was perfect.

The breakfast buffet was good, although I miss the Turkish tea already.

We started our touristing at Kalemegdan Park, home of the Belgrade Fortress. It was a bit chilly at 10am, about 12C, but it warmed up to 17C by the afternoon.

There weren’t many other tourists out this early. We explored around the Fortress. It takes up a lot of ground, it took us a while to get around. From the historic centre, it’s mostly walls and turrets and views of confluence of the Danube and Sava rivers. Around the north end, we came across the Roman well. It didn’t open until 11am, so we continued with our fortress exploring.

The Despot’s gate and Zindan gate are pretty interesting, with stairs and bridges across (empty) moats and passageways through the fortress walls.

Just outside the gates are a couple small churches. The interiors of both churches are pretty spectacular, with frescoes covering Ružica Church, and mosaic tiles in St. Petka Chapel. Both are active places of worship.

Back in the fortress, we walked past Damad Ali Pasha turbe, a mausoleum and one of the few surviving relics of Turkish rule.

It was almost 11am and there were now a handful of tour groups, although the grounds are large enough to absorb the crowds.

We walked back to the Roman well. The ticket booth person was just arriving to open up, and we were the first in. This is one place where it helps to avoid the tour groups. The well is over 51m deep, and lined with spotlights all the way down. There’s also spiral staircases on the outside of the well. It would have been quite the undertaking to dig this back in the day. It would have provided a constant water supply for when the fortress was under siege.

After Kalemegdan, we walked over to the Cathedral Church of Saint Michael the Archangel. We can see its spire from our hotel room. The cathedral is surrounded by 3-4 storey high buildings, so it’s not easy to get a full pic. Across the street is the Serbian Orthodox Church Museum, which also has nice architecture, complementing the cathedral.

We then walked about 30 minutes towards the Nikola Tesla Museum. We had lunch at nice cafe. We both had their gnocchi, which was excellent, followed by a Serbian coffee. A Serbian coffee (here at least, a sample size of one) was the size of a small coffee but muddy like a Turkish coffee. It was a lot of caffeine. We liked it.

We showed up at the Nikola Tesla museum around 1:45pm. That’s when we realized that visits are organized, scheduled on the hour. The 2pm tour was already full (there’s maybe 50 people allowed per tour). They suggested we come back at 2:30 to line up for the 3pm tour.

What to do for 45 minutes? Luckily, there was another highlight we wanted to see, about 15 minutes away. Perfect!

We walked over to the Church of Saint Sava. It’s a large building, white with green domes and black trim. Aside from its size, it didn’t stand out, although the design was based on the Hagia Sophia. Then we went inside, and were blown away. It’s completely covered in mosaics and sculptures. The size is really impressive inside. When we visited the Hagia Sophia, it was half covered in scaffolding and so we didn’t get a full appreciation of its size. Here the size is fully visible and it’s enormous. We were really impressed.

There’s more mosaics and artwork in the basement. We did have a schedule to keep (we’d almost forgotten about the Nikola Tesla museum) so didn’t spend much time down there.

We poked our heads into the St. Sava Small Church, it was just as elaborately decorated inside, but as its name suggests, smaller.

Then we walked quickly back to the museum. We got there around 2:35, there were maybe fifteen people already in line. Within minutes, the line grew down the stairs and out the gate, beyond where it was when we showed up originally.

At 3pm, they started letting folks in, ten at a time, to buy tickets. It’s cash Serbian RSD only.

There’s three parts to the tour. First we watched a fifteen minute video on the history of Nikola Tesla’s life.

Then there were demos of three experiments. The second experiment was the most nerve-wracking. We stood around a large transformer, with a few of us holding fluorescent light bulbs in the air. We grounded the electricity and the bulbs lit up. Heather filmed a video. I’m the fluorescent bulb closest on the left.

On the last part of the tour, we were free to wander around the museum (really just a few rooms in a house) and take pics. They have replicas of some of his patents, and some of the tools he used. Tesla’s ashes, stored in a spherical urn, are also displayed in a separate room.

Overall it was interesting to see, but not what I had pictured the museum to be.

We walked back to our hotel, taking in the street scenes. There’s a lot of wide sidewalks with mature tree canopies, and sidewalk cafes everywhere. It’s too bad they don’t turn Yonge St south of Bloor into something like this.

We had dinner at Lola, another restaurant close to our hotel. We over-ate, and had to go for a walk down Kneza Mihaila after. We also walked over to the nearby Republic Square, which reminded us a bit of the Zócalo in Mexico City. There was a band busking, playing a really catchy tune that stuck in my head right up until we fell asleep.

Belgrade, Serbia

Our flight from Sofia to Belgrade wasn’t until 4pm so we did have the morning available. Unfortunately we couldn’t get late check out as someone else had our room booked. The weather was crappy; cold, windy, and raining. So we just stayed at the hotel until noon.

I packed up our luggage to meet the Air Serbia rules 23kg / 23kg / 8kg. We didn’t have a scale in the room so I just guessed.

We used the Yellow Taxi app to get to the airport. It was pretty cheap, about 16 EUR, and the app used ApplePay.

The Air Serbia counter didn’t open until 2pm, so we had lunch and a coffee at Costa Coffee. Next was the big reveal, how much did our luggage weigh? It came in at 22.6 / 20.5 / 7.9. Pretty good! So no overweight fees for us :)

It was a small flight, on an ATR 72, and only half full. I had to gate-check my carry-on as the overhead bins are tiny.

We had a nice view of the Danube and fields of bright yellow canola as we approached Belgrade.

Our luggage was quick to come out (it’s pretty fast when there’s only 30 passengers), we met our driver, and drove into Belgrade.

The traffic in Belgrade is almost as bad as Toronto’s. It took us over 30 minutes to get to the hotel.

We gained an hour, so had plenty of time to organize ourselves and head out for dinner. It was just starting to rain so we took our umbrellas. The restaurant was literally across the street, but we had to get some cash for tipping and the ATMs were a few minutes away. The area that we’re staying in is full of pedestrian areas and cosy cafes and restaurants. The restaurant we ate at was small, seating maybe 24 people. We had pasta for a change, which was really good.

We walked around the historic centre for a bit after dinner. Belgrade looks like a nice city to spend the next couple days. This was an add-on to our trip after we cancelled the southeast leg of Türkiye, so we hadn’t done much advance planning. When we got back to the hotel we sketched out some things to see while we’re here.

Sofia, Bulgaria

Most travel blogs suggest a day trip for Day 3 of a three day visit to Sofia. There weren’t many highlights remaining in the centre for us to visit, but we figured just wandering around was fun. We actually did spend the full day seeing stuff, but if you’re pressed for time, you could make it a two day visit and see most of the highlights.

We started by heading to Vitosha Boulevard, a pedestrian-only shopping area. It’s lined with cafés and bars, and was pretty bustling with school kids. It must have been some sort of day off for schools.

Anyways we walked down Vitosha towards Central Park and the NDK building (National Palace of Culture / ). It’s an old Soviet building, now turned into a shopping mall. The outside is interesting enough for a pic. Plus the park was filled with tulips, and the water fountain was operational. (Most fountains are still winterized).

The park was also hosting the annual Spring Fest, with food and craft vendors, a small Ferris wheel, and an antique merry-go-round.

We walked back down Vitosha to the other end. Along the way we shopped for some of our toiletries we were running low on. Bulgaria is part of the euro and had lots of western products and brands we use.

We went back to the Spring Fest for lunch, and had a bratwurst. It was okay, it looked like it would be better.

We walked towards Slaveykov Square, another pedestrian area. Along the way we passed through an embassy area, and found a cute little coffee shop for a break. Heather later spotted some martenitsi in a tree. These are red and white bracelets that the wearer ties to the first tree they see flowering. It’s one of the souvenirs we bought for the key shelf, but it was cool to see them in real life.

Slaveykov Square wasn’t much to see, the walk over was more interesting. So we walked back towards the hotel, through the same neighbourhood with the street art. Took some more pics down streets we hadn’t seen yesterday, and then called into the same beer place for a 0% beer. I tried a Pohjala, which was my favourite craft brewery in Estonia.

We got back to the hotel around 4pm, and got in a few more loads of laundry. It was nice to finally wash some items like our puffy jackets.

We enjoyed our 3rd day here in Sofia more than we had expected. Although I think it’s as Heather’s friend Fed once said, the enjoyment of a vacation is directly related to the weather.

Sofia, Bulgaria

We had another nice breakfast at our hotel. I really like their french toast :)

We had time to do some planning last night, so had a little more structure to our wanderings today. We actually walked by a few of the attractions yesterday that were on our list for today.

On our way out we ran into the owner or manager of the hotel. We chatted with him for a few minutes, and he asked about our plans for the day. He suggested a couple more places to see, as well as a recommendation for lunch.

Originally we planned to start at the National Art Gallery. It was such a beautiful morning that we changed our minds and decided to do our outdoor stuff first. The Art Gallery would need to wait until the afternoon. It’s closed on Mondays otherwise we would have just visited tomorrow.

There’s a mosque, synagogue and church all within metres of each other, in what is called the Triangle of Religious Tolerance. I’ve sometimes seen it expanded to a square or quadrangle, which includes both a Roman Catholic and Orthodox Catholic, but to me that’s all under the larger umbrella of Christianity.

We first visited the synagogue. It’s covered with scaffolding and we weren’t sure how to enter or if it was even open. It turned out the non-obvious entrance was security-related. We had to ring a bell outside a gate and then ask to visit. We were then buzzed into a staging area, where we showed our id through the wrought iron fence. We just showed a scan of our passports on our phone which worked for us; it might be different for other nationalities.

Another gate opened to allow us through the staging area to the next room, where we passed through a metal detector and had our daypacks searched.

It’s a 10 EUR entrance fee, payable at the synagogue entrance. It comes with a self-guided tour accessed over the free wifi.

The synagogue is beautiful, my favourite out of the three in the triangle. It’s topped with an octagonal dome, with the side rooms containing museum-like displays on Jewish traditions and local history.

Next we walked over to the mosque, Banya Bashi. We had taken pics of the exterior of the mosque yesterday. We took off our shoes, Heather donned the loaner head scarf, and we entered. Entering was the opposite of the heavy security at the synagogue - it was just tourists inside (and only a couple at that). It’s a smaller mosque compared to those we had visited in Türkiye, but still nice to see.

On the way to the church of the triangle, we walked by Serdica subway station and the Roman ruins uncovered when the subway was being built. The ruins are quite extensive. It’s nice that they preserved this during the subway construction, as it would make a commute more interesting.

We also saw the murals surrounding Izzy’s café, the lunch place recommended by the hotel person.

Next we stopped by the ancient orthodox rotunda church, Saint George". It’s in the interior courtyard of Sofia Balkan Palace. There’s more Roman ruins here too. There was a religious ceremony in progress so we didn’t enter the church.

We stopped into a souvenir shop in the courtyard and bought some rose oil for the key shelf. Bulgaria produces over 70% of the world’s rose oil, which I didn’t even know was a thing until this trip.

We finally made it to the Cathedral of Saint Nedelya, the church of the triangle. There’s a 5 EUR charge to take pics inside. I paid it but it looked like most folks didn’t see the sign and just took pics anyways. The interior walls and ceiling are covered with elaborate frescoes.

We walked a little further east to the City Garden and Ivan Vazov National Theatre. There were families enjoying the beautiful Sunday weather in the park. There were lots of Easter eggs to be found, as ornaments in trees, or 2’-tall ones decorating the park. These were popular with little kids.

We made our way back to Izzy’s café and had lunch. I had a classic eggs Benedict and Heather had an avocado version. Both were excellent.

After lunch we walked over to the National Art Gallery. It’s not that extensive, mostly portraits and landscapes. Historically there hasn’t been much of an art scene in Bulgaria. One of the displays noted that artists were encouraged to go elsewhere where they would be more appreciated. The gallery is housed in an old palace, which I found pretty impressive.

Izzy’s café is the starting point for the popular Sofia Graffiti Tour. We ran into the tour a couple times over the next hour or so, as we did our own independent tour of street art. There’s lots to be found, and we were just exploring the neighbourhood adjacent to our hotel.

On our way back to the hotel, we passed by the Vagabond Beer Shop. There were a couple folks having a beer on a bench outside the bar. It was a great day for a beer, so we checked to see if they had any 0% beers. They had a whole fridge shelf! Heather tried a sour, and I had a choice of four IPAs. I tried a sea salt IPA from Germany. We sat outside and enjoyed the weather.

Later we had dinner at the hotel. It was a fun day wandering around Sofia. It’s a compact core and very photogenic.

Sofia, Bulgaria

We’d been waiting to get to our hotel in Sofia because they have self-serve laundry :) Self-serve laundromats aren’t a thing in Türkiye, so it’s nice to have access to a washing machine for larger items like jeans.

We had a tasty breakfast in the restaurant downstairs. They do good coffees and cappuccinos too.

After breakfast, we went down to the basement level to check out the laundry facilities. It’s a combo washer and dryer, but also an eco one (which take forever). Someone else had a load going which had another 3.5 hours to go :( Looks like laundry would be an afternoon thing.

We got ourselves together and headed out sightseeing. It was a beautiful day in Sofia for walking around, about 17C and partly sunny.

The main attraction in Sofia is the Patriarchal Cathedral of St. Alexander Nevsky, with its gold-plated domes. Along the way there, we passed by the Banya Bashi mosque, and the Regional History Museum of Sofia. There’s lots of grand old buildings here.

The Cathedral is surrounded by a large square, so it’s easy to get pics from all angles. The interior of the cathedral is also quite spacious and picturesque. There’s no charge to enter so we just left a small donation.

There’s a little market near the cathedral selling Soviet paraphernalia and old Cyrillic signage. I bought a martenitsa, one of the souvenirs I was hoping to find. It’s a red and white bracelet made of thread, which family and friends give to each other on March 1. It’s worn until the person sees their first flower of spring, at which point they tie it to that tree. It’s now April, so I wasn’t sure I would find any (it’s like looking for Christmas stuff in February). The lady was selling all kinds of embroidery so I figured she might have some boxed away, and sure enough she did.

We continued on our random walk, stopping into the Church of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker. It’s a smaller church with a nice flowering garden in front.

Around the centre of Sofia, some of the roads are paved with yellow bricks. They were installed in the early 20th century, as part of efforts to modernize Sofia and make it unique. The yellow cobblestones do stand out.

It’s just getting into spring here, and the tulips were in bloom everywhere. It’s nice to see, after what was a very long winter in Toronto.

We had lunch at a döner place. The owner was originally from Tunisia and asked if we spoke French after he found out we were from Canada. So we ordered our lunch in French.

It was almost raining, enough for us to open our umbrellas. Walked through a farmers’ market on the way back to the hotel. The strawberries smelled amazing so we bought some, as we had a little kitchenette in our room to wash them, and the tap water in Sofia is safe to drink. Supposedly, the water in Sofia is some of the EU’s best! ^{[citation needed]} We also bought a kilo of tangerines for breakfast for 1 EUR.

The washing machine was available when we got back to the hotel, so we did a couple quick loads. We hang-dry our clothes so it didn’t take forever in the eco washer/dryer.

Later we went down for dinner at our hotel restaurant. The kitchen is highly rated in Sofia, and it was mostly non-hotel folks at dinner. The food was excellent. We split a charcuterie board (we wanted to try the cured meats and cheeses in Bulgaria), and then Heather had a mushroom dish and I had the sea bass. Very fancy and yummy!

Sofia, Bulgaria

We finished our Türkiye leg of the trip today. We spent 21 days here, although for some reason it felt longer. Maybe it’s because we had some sightseeing on most transit days? While we still would like to come back to Türkiye to see the southeast at some point in the future, we both felt like we were ready to move on for this trip. Türkiye has a lot of cool things to see, and a lot of variety. Some of the highlights for me were places I had not heard of prior to the trip - Sagalassos Ancient City, the Whirling Dervishes in Konya, Ani ruins, the Kaçkar mountains, and hiking in the Rose Valley in Cappadocia.

We had a quick breakfast in our hotel room in Trabzon with the bread, cheese, tangerines and ayran (yoghurt drink) we had bought yesterday.

It was pretty quick to then check out from the Hilton, load up the car one last time, and drive seven minutes to the airport. We had filled up the tank last night, so didn’t need to bother with gas stations this morning.

We didn’t see any signs for the car rental return (at least not in English) so drove up to the domestic departures and asked someone. It was just down a level near the Otopark.

The Avis guy went through his checklist and then we lugged our suitcases back up to the departures level.

I had looked into shipping the carry-on suitcase back to Toronto, filled with our cold weather clothes, but it’s pretty pricy. Most our flights allow either two checked bags per person or a carry-on, so we’ll just haul it all the way home. We’re the opposite of folks who travel with just carry-on lol.

Checked in for our flight and then settled in for the wait (our flight was at 11am). I caught up in my blog (flights are good for this).

It was just over two hours to fly to Istanbul (IST). We got served a heated sandwich which was actually pretty good.

At IST, we followed the signs for International Transfer, got an exit stamp from Türkiye, and then we were airside in International Departures! Didn’t have to go through security or lineups anywhere, which was cool.

My Mastercard is just a cash-back card, and when I signed up for it there weren’t any other benefits. On a whim I googled it to see if I had any new travel benefits. According to the AI search results, my card now gives me access to fourteen airport lounges per year!

I was still doubtful, but we figured we’d check it out, as we had six hours to kill. The iGA lounge was at the opposite end of the IST terminal, which took us about ten minutes to walk. There was quite the lineup to enter, but the check-in process was really efficient and the line moved quickly. The long lineup had us wondering just how crowded it would be inside. Oh well, we had gone this far.

Turns out the iGA lounge is ginormous. Most folks crowd into the closest areas to the entrance; we walked through to the mezzanine area overlooking the terminal below. It was quite the relaxing place to eat and while away the time. My credit card pass had a limit of three hours (you have to scan your boarding pass to both enter and exit), so we left before any potential extra charges kicked in.

The Istanbul Airport Museum is right beside the iGA lounge. Many of the museums we had visited throughout Türkiye had empty displays with a sign “On loan to Istanbul Airport Museum”. We had also seen ads for the museum on previous transfers through IST, and had talked about visiting it. So we bought our ticket and entered.

The museum is well done, with artefacts from around the country. Each also has a plug for Turkish Airlines, with a little graphic showing how long it would take to fly there. We spent about 90 minutes going through.

Between the museum and the lounge access I didn’t know I had, the six hour layover turned out to be rather pleasant.

We went down to our gate and waited to board. The flight was full, but I managed to get some space in the overhead bin for our carry-on.

Eighty minutes later we were in Sofia. Bulgaria is part of Schengen and has the new biometric entry requirements for non-EU folks. We had been seated near the front of the plane and the first through immigration so didn’t have a wait.

We had booked airport pickup cause we arrived at night (8pm). It was a short 20 minute drive to our hotel, the DOT Sofia. The check-in was fully online (they don’t have a front desk). I had earlier got our digital keys via the Goki app. I haven’t used it before; it’s quite good.

We have three full days in Sofia. We added Sofia (and Belgrade) to our itinerary after we swapped out the southeast leg of Türkiye, so we’ll have to start tomorrow by figuring out what to do and see here :)

Trabzon, Türkiye

Google Maps said that the Sümela Monastery got really busy after 10am (presumably when the bus tours roll in), so we planned to get there for 8am when the gates opened. Add in the hour drive from Trabzon to Sümela, and it was an early start for us.

Most cafés don’t open until 9am so we just got in the car and drove, and hoped to pick up some food along the way.

First we drove through Trabzon itself (our hotel is in the suburbs). There wasn’t much traffic at 7am.

We reached Maçka, where the route cuts off the highway into the valley. The road through Maçka was terrible - it looked like they were doing some infrastructure work on either the sewer or water supply, and had torn up the entire road. It was otherwise a bustling little town. We stopped to pick up some fresh simits and tangerines for breakfast.

The drive from Maçka was through a narrow gorge, with barely enough room for a road beside the river, between the steeply rising cliffs on both sides. Another fun drive!

Our research on how to visit Sümela said we’d need to park our car about 4km from the gate and then take a shuttle bus. The first parking lot we reached seemed deserted. So we just carried on up the road. We then reached another parking lot, which had more signs of life. There was someone in a ticket booth, and smoke from a wood-burning stove.

The ticket booth was selling tickets for the shuttle bus. He was having trouble booting up his app to sell us tickets. We were at about 1200m and it was only 5C, so we went back to the car to wait.

A few minutes later, I went back and was able to buy the shuttle tickets, 180 TRY for the two of us (about 6 CAD). He typed in 830 on his calculator, which I interpreted as the time of the first shuttle bus. I guess the gates don’t open at 8am.

We ate our simits and tangerines, which were really good. Another car drove up, and we watched the two tourists go through the same steps we just did (minus the simit and tangerine part).

The shuttle bus drivers started trickling in to start their shift. They all headed to the shed with the wood burning stove to have a çay (tea), have a cigarette, and chit chat with the other drivers. (As an aside, we’ve been surprised at how many people smoke in Türkiye).

A tour bus pulled in around 8:20. This was good, as the shuttle bus doesn’t leave until it’s full, and the four of us certainly weren’t filling it up.

At 8:25 we got out of our warm car to get in line for the shuttle. One of the drivers at the shed motioned to us to come over, and then offered us a çay! That was very nice of him. We had been lamenting in the car while eating that we could have used a çay, and here we were having one :)

We headed to the shuttle bus that was getting ready to go. At 8:35am we started the 4km drive up to the entrance.

At the drop off point, there’s then a bit of a walk up a rough stone pathway to the actual entrance. Various blogs had described it as a 15-20 minute walk; it took us about five. There was still ice and snow on some of the steps, so it was good we wore our hiking shoes.

At the top, we bought our tickets to the monastery (20 EUR, payable in equivalent TRY based on the current exchange rate). We were able to use ApplePay (some reviews we had read said it was cash only).

We still had to walk up about 50 steps up the outside the monastery to get to the entrance. And then we were in! It’s under major conservation, with cables for pulley systems rigged up, and scaffolding and construction walls marring the view. The classic pics weren’t available, but we were still able to get some unobstructed views. We had the place to ourselves for a few minutes, as the other folks from the shuttle were still making their way up.

Some of the terraces and rooms were off-limit, a relatively recent change (just a couple weeks ago, based on Google reviews). The frescoes were all visible to see, we just missed out on other vantage points for pics. It’s also more adventurous to navigate through the maze of pathways and doors and rooms.

Sümela Monastery was founded around 350 AD, built to its current state in the 13th century, and remained active until the fall of the Ottoman Empire in 1923. It only became a protected site in the 1970s, and on the UNESCO Tentative List in 2000. In between the 20s and 70s, there was no protection at all for the site :(

The frescoes are pretty cool, especially the upper ones that aren’t graffitied over. There’s also frescoes in great shape inside the main church. We took lots of pics :) Supposedly one of the icons was painted by the Apostle Luke!

I wouldn’t have thought that we would encounter so many things from the New Testament in Türkiye (we also saw the burial spot of John the Apostle in Selçuk), but I guess it’s not that far from Jerusalem.

The bus group fully arrived at the top and they all congregated to hear their guide. With one bus it wasn’t so bad; mid-day with multiple busloads would be crowded and chaotic.

We spent maybe 20 minutes in Sümela Monastery and then headed back down. First we checked out Aya Varvara Kilisesi, the ruins of another church outside the walls of the monastery. It’s not much to look at, but it has a great exterior view of Sümela, clinging to the side of the cliff.

Then we waited about five minutes for the shuttle bus to fill up to take us back down. Got our car in the parking lot, paid our 200 TRY now that the parking lot attendant was there (about 7 CAD), and drove back to our hotel in Trabzon.

We cleaned up and then went downstairs for a large Turkish breakfast at the hotel restaurant. It was so-so, but filling.

We were feeling lazy so just relaxed the rest of the day. We fly to Sofia tomorrow, with a six-hour layover in Istanbul, so we packed up our luggage in airplane mode (no liquids in the carry-on). We went off-campus and bought some snacks for breakfast and lunch for tomorrow, as the prices in IST airport are exorbitant.

Later I went down to the restaurant for dinner. I ordered the grilled sea bass and ended up getting grilled salmon. It was still fish I guess, and cooked perfectly, so I didn’t bother to point out. I had wanted to try some fish from the Black Sea (mullet, turbot, anchovies, sardines), but they didn’t have any on the menu.