Top 10 travel moments thus far

1. Bobbing in the warm sea at sunset after a long bus ride in Costa Rica, feeling the grime wash away and my cramped-up body relax.


2. Padding in my socks around the massive tiled courtyard of the Shrine of Hazrat Ali in Mazar-e Sharif, Afghanistan, white pigeons swirling over its gleaming turquoise domes.


3. Running through the cobbled streets of Beirut’s Hamra district, cheered on by students and watched over by soldiers atop tanks as I completed my first 10k.


4. Dipping my fingers in the Arctic Ocean and watching small icebergs float close to shore after a day interviewing inhabitants of bleak native villages.


5. Stumbling on a circle of men listening to a Kurdish storyteller sing traditional tales in Diyarbakır, Turkey, and being invited to eavesdrop over tea.


6. Clambering through a crumbling power plant and sleeping in a jail cell during an overnight photography workshop on Alcatraz.


7. Scrambling away from a charging camel along with a crowd of local spectators at a camel-wrestling tournament near İzmir, Turkey.


8. Seeing the way Picasso explored themes and ideas in sketches and ceramic works at the Picasso Museum in Paris and feeling like I had a glimpse into thought processes never revealed by the masterpieces.


9. Looking down into a bubbling red volcanic crater while making the 18.5-kilometer trek over Mount Tongariro in New Zealand.


10. Returning to Istanbul after my first trip out of the country since moving there and feeling like I was coming home.

This post has been entered into the Grantourismo HomeAway Holiday-Rentals travel blogging competition.

Settling in, in a once-strange land

Not long ago, I sat down to watch the popular Turkish film Issız Adam (“Solitary Man”). As the title character ducked into a small shop on the winding street where some of my friends live, or chatted with diners inside a restaurant where I’d eaten with coworkers, I felt the same warm sense of nostalgia one might experience while looking through vacation photos long after an enjoyable trip. But in my case, the stores and streets and scenic views were all still just outside my front door.

After three years of living in Istanbul, the things that so gleefully widened my eyes as a tourist – the skyline full of minarets, the man selling vegetables from a horse cart, the labyrinthine backstreets of Eminönü – have inevitably faded into the background of day-to-day life. Somehow seeing these same sights on film, contributing to other viewers’ romantic notions of the city, momentarily made them fresh again.

Settling in is not exotic. It’s not exciting. It doesn’t create the same rush of sensation as travel. Instead, it’s being handed half a mandarin to eat while I pick out my produce, or chatting with the butcher about the best cut of meat for a particular dish. It’s knowing what the latest crowd of demonstrators on İstiklal Caddesi is protesting, and being able to laugh along at some of the onstage banter at a rock show. And when I do travel, it’s realizing that all my reference points have shifted to relate to my new home.

This post has been entered into the Grantourismo HomeAway Holiday-Rentals travel blogging competition.

Christmas in Istanbul

A Turkish breakfast -- boiled eggs, olives, honey and cream, village cheese, and copious amounts of tea and bread -- before perusing an exhibit of Saudi contemporary art. Then home to start cooking an English-style roast. A ham, of course, was pretty much out of the question in this mostly Muslim country. The weather was mild, the streets busy with Saturday strollers and shoppers. I watched birds circle over my apartment building and thought about my loved ones still asleep in the United States, presents resting under a six-foot tree, and those blanketed with snow in Europe.

A union group started a protest march in front of the neighborhood hospital, chanting loudly and blocking traffic. Just a couple of streets away, bereaved families gathered underneath the municipality-strung New Year’s lights on İstiklal Caddesi to demand justice, for the 300th time, for relatives who had disappeared while in police or military custody or been the victims of unsolved murders, a story we’d report the next day at the newspaper where I work.

As I walked home after leaving the office on Dec. 26, I noticed colorfully frosted cookies in the shape of snowmen and fir trees had appeared in the window of a local bakery – just in time for New Year’s.

This post has been entered into the Grantourismo HomeAway Holiday-Rentals travel blogging competition.