On September 3rd, 2025 we head back to Thailand via six weeks in Eastern Europe. PDX-DEN-FRA-IST flights. Start in Istanbul, then Bulgaria, Romania, Serbia, and Hungary, before flying back to Bangkok from Munich nonstop.
We begin in Istanbul, then fly to Bulgaria, and travel by car for a week. Then fly to Romania, and travel by car for two weeks. Then we fly to Serbia, and visit friends. Then on to Budapest for a last week or so. We will be just across a river from western Ukraine, but as Russia has been making misslle attacks on border crossing, we won’t visit Ukraine.
Then back to Thailand:
These are the ‘great circle’ or shortest routes. As the one to Bangkok flies over an active war area, I imagine we’ll actually detour south of that area! It does appear likely we’ll fly just south of the highest Himalaya mountains.
I will try to post more as time and internet connections allow. In much of rural Romania, we may be staying in small inns without internet.
We arrived in Istanbul on September 4th. As an alternative to taking a taxi, we had reserved a car transfer through a company called Adore. As they require payment in Euros to driver, we had to get enough Euros during our brief Frankfurt layover. We found our driver without problems. The airport is about an hour’s drive.
A friend had recommended an unusual ‘hotel’ in the old town area known as Sultanahmet (named after Sultan Ahmet), which consists of 17 four story tall wooden Ottoman homes from the late 19th century near the Topkapi Palace. Our choice was the ‘Green House’:
It turned out to indeed be a great location, and very comfortable:
After 15 flight hours and about 24 hours in transit, we took a nap! That evening, we walked out to check out the neighborhood. It was pretty, and lively and felt quite safe.
Sultanahmet is on the peninsula between the Bosphorus, the Golden Horn, and the Sea of Marmara, which leads out through the Dardanelles Strait to the Mediterranean Sea.
We began our visit with a traditional Turkish breakfast. Delicious!
The weather was delightful: 78°F and sunny, so we decided to take a ferry ride out on the Sea of Marmara to nearby islands
On the ferry, we met a Kurdish family. With the aid of Google Translate, we had a nice chat. The parents are math teachers. The Kurds live in an area between Iraq and Turkey, and have been trying without success to form their own country there. Neither country wants to let them do so.
Istanbul has been a crossroads for thousands of years. Part of the fun of visiting is meeting people from many countries. The Turkish people themselves were friendly and helpful.