Really belated blog post

Well blog, it's been a while. (when I last wrote this it was March...so now it's been even more of a while)

A lot has happened since we last spoke (even moooooore). So much that I might need to write in you twice. In a row. Lots of things. But I think you can take it. (yeah...March Grace was ambitious, we'll see about that one)

Last (last last last x10+) weekend I went to Amsterdam. I kind of just don't want to talk about it so I will make my Amsterdam review brief, perhaps a haiku. Here it goes:


Stroop waffle french fries

canals and charming architecture 

Anne Frank tears and Van Gogh ears
Pannenkoeken Boot


Like most of my travels (and my life in its entirety) this trip was centered around, and will be remembered by, food. Fresh, gooey, caramelly stroop waffels, huge paper cones full of freshly fried taters smothered in spicy mayonnaisey samurai saus, 75 minutes of all-you-can-eat pannenkoeken (dutch pancakes, somewhere in between crêpes and a flap jack)...these are the things I will remember. They have literally become a part of me since I used them to regenerate cells and such.

So Amsterdam was awesome, the Dutch were exceedingly friendly, everyone's English was a pannenkoeken boot better than my French, but the Van Gogh museum is overrated. Really though, it was 15 euros and I like the Van Goghs they have at Musée d'Orsay better, and that place is free. And now on to Istanbul.

Through this experience I have had many moments of standing in front of something, mouth gaping, thinking "OMG THIS IS SO AMMAAAAZINGGGG HOW IS EVERYONE ELSE NOT COMPLETELY FREAKING OUT RIGHT NOWWWW GAAAAAHHHHH!!!!" This sentiment basically characterizes my entire trip to Istanbul. It was passed in a five day sleep-deprived haze of awe, my mouth only closing when I stuffed it with Turkish delight. Or licked my ever-present cone of Turkish ice cream. After eating ice cream for three straight days in a row, I decided to make it a personal challenge to eat it every day I was in Istanbul. It's little goals like these that give life meaning when you conquer them. And I did, finishing up with a ridiculously over-priced cone consumed at 4 in the morning in the Ataturk Airport. Also, Turkish ice cream is super thick and toothsome and the ice cream mongers use this long metal paddle to beat it into submission and slap a chunk on a cone. This one guy stuck in his ice cream prong and pulled out the entire bucket-molded hunk of chocolate flavor, to which my friend and travel-buddy Cara said, "That looks like a big turd." And it did. But I wanted to eat it anyway.

Blue Mosque, starring Cara 

I loved Istanbul because it felt so completely and utterly different from Paris, or Amsterdam, or anywhere. Definitely not Erie, Colorado. Everything was so old, like stone-medusa head old. And it just feels like there was a lot of struggle there. I loved staring at mosaics and thinking about the tiny ancient man (probably wasn't a woman let's get real) who spent his days eating ancient Turkish ice cream and putting tiny iridescent tiles on a wall. It was by the ocean, but not beachy, but not-not beachy like Seattle, just this alien beach/not-beach feel I have never felt. One day we took a ferry to this chain of islands and walked around the biggest, called Büyükada. Once again, WEIRD! This island was full of random stray horses, dogs and cats, a pine forest, huge abandoned building, sprawling summer villas, and lots of ice cream (surprise!). It was beautiful, though, with the sunniest day we had the whole trip and the smell of green and pine and Turkish ice cream and horse doodie wafting up from the sea. Ahhhhhh, nothing beats the smell of horse doodie and stray cat urine on a Turkish island, am I right?

The blue mosque, beautiful inside and out