Intro and travel days

Maybe you've seen comedic depictions of that guy that has friends over so he can force them to sit through a slide show of every single picture of his family vacation while overexplaining each individual picture. That's that this next series of posts will be. Really, these are more for me and Mila to help remember the fine details of the trip. How many trips have you taken that just a decade later you aren't sure which year you even went? There will only be a little bit of running in this supposed running blog (that I haven't added to in a couple years)

It was a bit chilly

I'll start with the running.  March 19th and 25th I ran the Tobacco Road 1/2 and Fort Bragg 1/2, respectively. The point was more just to have something to train for and have fun doing. During the first race, I decided to try and shoot for sub 4 between the 2. I did it, just barely.  With a watch distance of 26.84 miles, I finished in a time of 3:59:30.  I'll take it.

OK, that part's over. Mila and I have been trying to take a large trip since our 10th anniversary back in 2020. March 2020, to be exact. For one reason (COVID) or another, we haven't been able to take that trip, which was projected to be to Peru. In 2020, we had the trip sketched out and we waiting to pull the trigger on buying tickets and reserving hotels when COVID and the restrictions that came with it (like the fact that Mila was stuck in Panama) put a stop to that. In early 2023, severe political upheaval hit Peru, causing us to look at other options.

We have gone over our top 10 lists several times, so choosing wasn't that hard to do. Mila has been wanting to go to Santorini, Greece for years after seeing pictures online. She has also been watching Turkish telenovelas for the past few years, piquing her interest in that country. I can remember the Greek mythology book that I checked out multiple times from my elementary school library, immersing myself in the world of Hercules, Jason, Odysseus, and Achilles. More recently, I spent untold hours discovering the version of ancient Greece that Ubisoft created in Assassin's Creed Odyssey. Also, I cannot forget the effect that the movie 300 had on those of us that joined the military right after it came out. We ALL thought we were Spartans during basic training. 

As far as my interest in Turkey, it goes hand in hand with my love of history and all things Rome. I have been listening to Robin Pierson's The History of Byzantium podcast ever since I finished up with Mike Duncan's History of Rome podcast a few years back. Robin started his podcast in an effort to pick up where Mike left off and strives to keep in similar in style and tone. He takes about 25 episodes to dissect each century. With each episode lasting 30-40 minutes each, I'm only about 150 episodes in, somewhere in the 10th century. This whole trip was full of spoilers.

We initially sought out help planning the trip, hoping to book tours and combination packages through the free services at our disposal.  There's a reason they're free. I ended up taking the general things Mila wanted to see, what we knew of the countries, the old faithful Visit A City app and site, and my mom's suggestions Rick Steve's books and website.

With our 13th anniversary being on March 26th, we decided to fly out on the 25th. We would be getting into Istanbul in the afternoon, perfectly timed for us to have an anniversary dinner in Istanbul. Planned anyways.

After sitting at the gate for quite some time, we spent additional time on the tarmac due to weather in Newark.  We only had a a 1 hour layover projected and had an hour and a half delay, but the stewardess remarked that all flights leaving Newark were delayed too. We got to the gate roughly 20 minutes after the plane took off. They'd only delayed 15 minutes. neat. United was able to figure out flights for us the next night. It could have been worse, the guys in line ahead of us were to be delayed 4 days. We took a ride to the seedy free hotel somewhere in Jersey, tried contacting our hotel in Turkey (unsuccessfully), restructured our Istanbul plans, and tried to figure out what we would do with a free day in New Jersey.

Mila spent a week training in NYC in 2008 and went on a road trip there a few years back with her dad and some friends. I spent a full day there in July/August 2001 (remember what I said about not being able to remember prior trip details), but nothing more. We even ended up driving by the Twin Towers, but the highlight of the trip was going up to the Empire State Building observation deck. Andy was (is) a huge King Kong fan and our grandpa wanted to take him there.

Since I'd only spent a short time there, but only had a short time, there was not a whole lot that we could do but we'd need to move quickly to do anything at all.

We started in Central Park.

View of San Reno from the bow bridge

I don't like having my picture taken standing in front of landmarks, buildings, paintings, etc. So, Mila tends to sneak pictures of me looking at things.  You'll notice that I'm looking away from the camera or look incredibly awkward in most of the pictures that I'll post here

A few years back I detailed my dream races list and the NYC marathon made the list.  This may be the closest I come to finishing it but I'm not absolutely opposed to throwing my name in the raffle one of these years.

USS Maine National Monument at the Merchants' Gate entrance by Columbus Circle.

From there, we walked to Times Square since I hadn't visited there my first time.

walking down Broadway

First view of Times Square

see... super awkward

not awkward

too bad we didn't have time for a show

No, we didn't stop for pictures with Times Square characters.  Most of them were walking around with their masks up above their face, creating a 2-faced Mickey Mouse and others. Terrifying. Another spot that I didn't see my first time but appears in every New York tv show or movie is Rockefeller Center.  So, we sped on.

La Gran Manzana 

Probably should have checked into ice skating

Mila hadn't really seen/noticed the Empire State Building during her previous stays so we did a walk-by.

snapped a quick shot of St. Patrick's Cathedral first

Mila added for scale

Of course, there was only one choice for lunch.

We went by the Flatiron building but it was shrouded for restoration.

I pointed out earlier that the only other time I'd visited NYC was in late summer 2001. Since then, the world has changed. For a long time, I have wanted to visit Ground Zero. In truth, our day was built around making it there to pay our respects.

After spending some time there, we grabbed a snack and headed back to the hotel to catch our Uber back to the airport. We had a 7 hour flight into London, (I slept maybe 28 seconds) and got into Istanbul just as the sun was about to go down. But that, dear reader, (OK probably just me) will be detailed in the next post.  I'll hopefully have that out in a day or two.