WEEKLY WRAP-UP
Touchdown In Turkey
My week in photos — Week 20 & 21— July 28–August 10, 2022
Well, these last couple of weeks have been a bit of a whirlwind! With the beginning /end of the month and numerous articles that I wanted to write to wrap that up, plus finishing our art projects in Uganda and starting to pack and get ready for our travels, I was busy!
Sorry that I didn’t submit a wrap-up last week!
But now, here we sit in Istanbul, and I feel like I finally have the time to get focused back on my writing. Let me try to catch you up on the last couple of weeks.
As I reported on my last weekly wrap-up, we finished our big mural project at the place where we were staying. But I had one more tiling project to do, this time with the owner. I wanted to show her how to do the tile mosaics so that she could continue doing it in the future. She has a ton of old tile pieces from numerous projects around the property, and she admitted that she wanted to tile many things, but didn’t know how.
To show her how I devised a plan to create a charging station in the bar area. This area was the charging station previously, as it is one of the only places with a plug outlet, but people would just leave their devices on a plain blue table that was in the corner. I knew for sure that we could improve on that design.
As I had plans to paint the pillars that framed the mural anyways, I figured that we could incorporate some shelves onto the wall, which would eliminate the need for any sort of table which cluttered up the area.
One of her staff members built some wooden shelves and nailed them into the wall using concrete nails, and we were on our way.
We also finished the two coffee tables that we had been painting that I shared in the last update.
On one of our last evenings in Fort Portal, Martha, the owner of the place we were staying, wanted to take us to watch the sunset over 3 crater lakes. It was a magical evening and we really enjoyed getting yet another glimpse of the beauty of the surrounding area.
While up there, our friend John found a grass bunch that had numerous bright green grasshoppers (or maybe locusts) in it. There must have been 20 of them, or maybe more. We aren’t sure why they were only in one place, but it was certainly a colony of sorts.
They were well over 2" (5cm) in length, maybe even 3", and the colors and patterns on them were simply stunning. In the third photo below you can glimpse a few more in the background. There were many!
We spent most of Thursday last week getting our stuff ready and going through our luggage with a fine tooth comb. When we make big trips like this to new places, it is imperative to carefully go through our stuff to make sure that we aren’t dragging anything unnecessary with us. We tend to collect things that we don’t really need when we travel by bus.
Traveling by plane is of course different, and having extra stuff is not smart nor necessary.
The dogs on the property must have known that something was up as they kept coming around on our porch to see what we were doing. Once in a while, over the time we stayed there, one of them would come to check on us occasionally, but never all three. We were entertained by their antics.
On Friday we packed up Martha’s SUV and headed off to Entebbe. We were lucky that she had to go to Kampala anyways, so she offered to give us a ride. I wrote a whole post about that experience which you can check out below.
We spent the weekend staying near Entebbe at a place called the Plastic Bottles House. We had to take a ferry across an inlet of Lake Victoria to reach it, so it was a bit out of the way, but we really enjoyed the peaceful vibe and the owner was great. He also had two adorable geese called Backy and Joe that manned the property.
We had a few things to do over the weekend in Entebbe and rode the ferry back and forth each day to accomplish them. Each trip across was entertaining and we became quite familiar with the boats and how they operated.
On one trip over we got a bit wet because of the waves that were splashing up onto the boat. We were jammed in like sardines amongst cars, people, and motorbikes, so we didn’t have the option of moving locations to find a drier spot. We just had to grin and bear it. This is a photo of the waves splashing up onto the car beside us. Thankfully it was fresh water!
We also had the privilege to witness this Open-Billed Stork sitting on one of the boats one day. I tried to capture the space between its upper and lower beak, but I couldn’t snap the photo quick enough when it turned its head. This is as good as it gets, I guess.
Monday brought us back to the Entebbe Zoo where we painted a large mural and started this leg of our Ugandan adventure almost 5 months earlier. We wanted to visit our friend Philip, plus it made a great place to hang out before Martha came to collect us to take us to the airport.
We took great pleasure in watching the wild Vervet Monkeys run around the property again. These mamas had VERY young babies attached to them.
We spent a few hours there and waited for Martha and her brother Rosco to pick us up. They took us to a beachside bar to relax and have dinner and some drinks before taking us to the Entebbe airport at 10:30 pm. Our flight was at the god-awful hour of 4:20 am if you can imagine. So we decided that having accommodation booked for that night would be a silly idea.
Instead, I got about 3 hours of sleep at the airport before heading off to wait in the departure terminal at close to 2:00 am. I wrote a post about our travel experience if you would like to check it out.
It went pretty smoothly until we reached Istanbul, at least!
Unfortunately, we were on the wrong side of the plane to see the stunning sunrise that was happening, but I captured a cool shot of a mosque as we entered Istanbul airspace, a sure sign that we were arriving in Turkey.
After getting to our hotel at about 4:30 pm, and after navigating numerous forms of public transport to get there, we crashed hard and didn’t wake up until around 8:30. Luckily a grocery store was still open in the neighborhood and we bought some simple snacks and took them back to the room to eat them.
Today we planned to just hang out at our hotel and check out our neighborhood. But once we got out we decided that we really wanted to go down to the main market area in Istanbul to find some of our favorite foods, so hopped on the train and rode it downtown. We spent 2.5 months in Istanbul at the end of 2020, so we knew where to go.
We were astonished by how busy it was!
When we were here last it was at the end of 2020, so during covid, plus it was winter! Summer and no covid make a HUGE difference! We didn’t realize how lucky we were to see the city so empty of people the last time. WOW!
We didn’t stay long in our favorite little streets as the throng of people scared us off. But we managed to purchase some goodies and enjoyed the familiar sights and sounds of the city anyways. I will be writing a more in-depth post about our first days in Istanbul soon.
After a couple of hours of poking around, we decided that it was time to head back to the hotel to relax our weary bones. I think we are still tired from the trip and the final days of being in Uganda.
We caught the popular Marmaray train and made our way back to the quiet solitude of our room, which is where I sit now:)
Thanks so much for joining me on our past couple of weeks' adventures. I can imagine that there are many more to come for us here in Turkey! Stay tuned!
Hope you all have a great week!
xo Jill
Thanks so much for joining me in my week in photos. Dennett started this challenge in her publication Weeds & Wildflowers during the beginnings of the pandemic, and it has since grown to include many authors. Check out the amazing writing and photography of Anne | Erika | Jane | Eileen | Juan | David | Mia | Susan | LensAfield | Kim | Barbara | Diana | Barb | Sandra | Shruthi | Ellie | Pene | Olive | Gustavo | Penny | Scott | Sasha | Tracy | Lisa | June | K. Barrett | Ivy and of course our host Dennett.
If you want to read about my past weeks, I have put all of my weeks in photos into their own list:
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