We headed off to buy some toiletries this morning; how expensive is this place!!!Dental floss 10TL (£5) - £2 UK; La roche Posay cream 45TL (£22) - £7 UK; Body Cream 20 TL (£10) - £2.50 UK). b******s!!! We got a lunchtime transfer to the airport for our AirBaltic flight to Tashkent, Uzbekistan, via Riga in Latvia.Maria tells me that I can't count Latvia on my list of visited countries so I guess I have to scrub off Iceland too then (transfer at Reykjavi...

We arrived at 0800 in Istanbul then waited, and waited, and waited for the transfer to the hotel. Another packed minibus with luggage stacked to the ceiling, with one passenger sat on top of that, we got dropped at a tube station near to Sultanahmet. Great, there's no way we can even think about using the tube with all our gear!We got a cab and the driver eventually got us to the Yusufpasa Konagi Hotel at 1000.We'd have been better off getting a taxi direct when ...

We get picked up late at 1030, instead of the pre-arranged 1000, but don't mind as we're running a little behind ourselves.We go to Mohammed's office first and are pleasantly surprised when he tells us that he's providing us with a free guide; maybe he feels guilty about yesterday.Anyway, our driver/guide seems very pleasant and we head off to Aphrodisias feeling more confident about the day ahead. Aphrodisias was a small city on the southwest coast of Asia M...

We got picked up straight away, together with the other tired eyed, vulnerable tourists, for the free transfer from Dinizli to Pamukkale,.Sitting comfortably with our bags crammed in the minibus we are ready for the off when more and more people and luggage squeeze in.'Come on', we're thinking, 'get a move on'.We're tired and want to get to our hotel.A few minutes later a man came rushing to our bus and told only us two to get off.'What the hell's going on?', w...

Today was like waking up for that all important meeting.You spend the night not sleeping for fear of missing the alarm then when you do finally drop off, wallop, 'that will be time to get up then'; it's 0430.But at least instead of a meeting we're off for what is the first ever hot air balloon ride for either of us.Maria managed to convince Caroline and Petra to give it a try and we bump into them waiting for the transport at 0530.Caroline has the caffeine DTs th...