Northern Jutland

Taking up a friend's offer to borrow a car for a couple days, Joanna and I got around the north of Jutland. We stopped off at a medieval fort, a Viking cemetery, a sand-buried church, a Renaissance manor house and a handful of German bunkers, half-buried along the sand-swept beaches of Denmark's North Sea coast. 

A WWII bunker looking over the North Sea from the hills of Bulbjerg, one of thousands along the Danish coast. 

Voergård Castle, a moated, sixteenth-century manor house near Dronninglund

The tower of a sand-engulfed church near Skagen

Lindholm Høje, Scandinavia's largest Viking burial grounds

The dunes of Råbjerg Mile

The beach at Skagen, marking the far northern tip of Jutland

Leaving Tarlabaşı

View from our balcony on Harman Sokak, Tarlabaşı

After a couple months in Istanbul's most lovely neighborhood, it was goodbye to Tarlabaşı--although Istanbul hasn't seen the last of us. For now, I'll miss the daily börek and the endless city views. I'm once again eligible to return to the Schengen Zone, and so it's back to Denmark for a bit.

Lycian Ghost Town

On our last day in Lycia, we headed 8km over the mountains south of Fethiye, stepping out at the edge of Kayaköy. Up until the massive population exchange of the early 1920s, when millions were kicked across the Aegean, Greek-speaking Christians called it home. Today, its several hundred crumbling homes still stretch up the mountainside, strung together by steep, narrow pathways and highlighted by a couple hollowed-out churches. 

Fethiye to Butterfly Valley

After a couple nights in Patara, we headed back to Fethiye for the trek to Butterfly Valley. The dolmuş brought us as far as Ölüdeniz, and from its broad, curving beach we took off to the south on foot. Just where the road began its long incline to Faralya, a truck driver pulled over to let us hop in back. Dropped by the cliffs' edge, overlooking the valley and its tiny sliver of turquoise water far below, we settled at George House, just where the steep path drops down to the beach. 

Back on the road the next morning, another kind driver carried us back to Ölüdeniz, where the sun came out just in time for a swim at one of Turkey's favorite postcard-perfect beaches. Stacked with rows upon rows of deck chairs and beach umbrellas in the summer, at the end of March we had it all to ourselves--at least for an hour or so, when the clouds returned and we headed back to Fethiye. 

 



 

Patara & Kaputaş

From a quick swing through ancient Patara, a once-flourishing Greek city on the southwest Lycian coast.