The wind scattering the clouds across the sky. A coconut drink in my hands. My feet in the Atlantic Ocean. The waves lulling us to sleep every night. Life definitely didn’t suck a few weeks ago. All that happened thanks to the incredible generosity of
After reading about your journey climbing up the pyramids, my conscious told me I had to share.
Thanks to listening mostly to Chris Ryan’s living abroad and world-traveling stories, some of your podcasts about growing up in Italy and moving to America (been following both of you since waaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyy back at the beginning of both your podcasts, October 2012.) 5-6 years later in 2018, I finally grew some balls and decided I would travel around the world. I ended my lease, and then began downsizing, I gave away lots of my belongings to friends and family and sold a lot more. I ended up only making it halfway around the world (that is a whole other story,) now I live in Izmir, Turkey two-thirds of the year as opposed to Tampa, Florida the rest.
There are so many ancient places in Turkey it’s amazing, with Greek, Roman, and several other ancient civilizations' architecture everywhere. The cities are BEAUTIFUL!!! Especially in east Turkey. My favorite is Şanlıurfa aka the City of Prophets, where most travelers stay if they plan on going to my favorite ancient civilization by far, Göbekli Tepe. If you think staying in an Airbnb in America is cool, you have ZERO clue how awesome it is in Turkey, legit 50 to 100-plus-year-old castles where only 4-5 groups of travelers stay in them at once. Not only is staying in ancient castles extremely cool but to top it off waking up to a Turkish breakfast for 2 people is easily enough food for a family of 5, my favorite item being 4-5 tablespoons of chocolate sauce, you weren’t imagining things, you heard correctly chocolate sauce for breakfast. Didn’t I say Turkey was cool? The rooms feel like small houses (2-3 large rooms for each set of travelers) and maybe most importantly you pay with Turkish Lira. One drawback, however, is due to the religious people in Turkey, if you plan on staying in east Turkey, a man and a woman traveling together better be married because most places won’t let you stay at them.
Finally. Back to the original reason I am writing this “comment.” Climbing up the pyramids.
St. Patty’s Day 2019 I started my journey in Chris’s international home city, Barcelona, and then moved on to Madrid. After leaving Madrid it was on to Tangier, Morocco, where I stayed in a hostel, and where I met 3, 19 to 22-year-old boys all from different European countries, 1 from England, and only 2 of them knew each other before Morocco. We walked around the city the first day at the hostel I stayed at. At one point they bought some oranges and we sat down on a little grassy area in the middle of the city to eat them. I had OJ many times before as it is a staple in America and I was born and lived in Florida my whole life. I had no clue how delicious an orange could taste (if you like fruit you need to take a trip to the Mediterranean countries,) it seemed like the most delicious orange I had, had in my life.
The next day we added a couple of young girls to our team of international wandering walkers from even more European countries and went on you guessed it, a walk. At one point we were very close to a body of water, you may have heard of it, the Atlantic Ocean. Right next to a steep in my mind mountain and the young kids decided to walk up (standing straight up like it was a flat surface) the "mountain," well maybe not a mountain to them but definitely to me. I was wearing blue jeans and a long-sleeved red shirt. One of the girls was a little scared and she was semi-crawling up the mountain. But me? I HAD NO CLUE even after being alive for 45 years that I was scared of heights. I was very close to dragging my belly on the ground while crawling up on all fours at a very slow pace. About halfway up the redheaded British kid says, in a very heavy British accent, “Sam you look ah’bit like Spi-erman.” As hilarious as it was I wasn’t laughing as I was still SCARED AS HELL crawling up to where the rest of the kids were waiting for me. They were all watching, not sure if they were worried or just thought it was funny, that this old-fogy scaredy-cat from America was taking this long to crawl up to the rest of them.
The end.
P.S. Professor Bolelli, you recently brought up that crazy ass person that got kicked off Twitter. I wanted to say I am very glad to say with your discount I bought one of his backpacks before he went off the VERY-VERY-VERY DEEP END. I use it all the time, especially when I go back and forth across the pond to Florida and Turkey.
Nice. I was in many of the same places around that time: Isla Mujeres, Merida, Palenque, San Cristobal de las Casas. I don't remember any talkative Italian kids, but it's funny to think we may have crossed paths. Glad you got to go back.
After reading about your journey climbing up the pyramids, my conscious told me I had to share.
Thanks to listening mostly to Chris Ryan’s living abroad and world-traveling stories, some of your podcasts about growing up in Italy and moving to America (been following both of you since waaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyy back at the beginning of both your podcasts, October 2012.) 5-6 years later in 2018, I finally grew some balls and decided I would travel around the world. I ended my lease, and then began downsizing, I gave away lots of my belongings to friends and family and sold a lot more. I ended up only making it halfway around the world (that is a whole other story,) now I live in Izmir, Turkey two-thirds of the year as opposed to Tampa, Florida the rest.
There are so many ancient places in Turkey it’s amazing, with Greek, Roman, and several other ancient civilizations' architecture everywhere. The cities are BEAUTIFUL!!! Especially in east Turkey. My favorite is Şanlıurfa aka the City of Prophets, where most travelers stay if they plan on going to my favorite ancient civilization by far, Göbekli Tepe. If you think staying in an Airbnb in America is cool, you have ZERO clue how awesome it is in Turkey, legit 50 to 100-plus-year-old castles where only 4-5 groups of travelers stay in them at once. Not only is staying in ancient castles extremely cool but to top it off waking up to a Turkish breakfast for 2 people is easily enough food for a family of 5, my favorite item being 4-5 tablespoons of chocolate sauce, you weren’t imagining things, you heard correctly chocolate sauce for breakfast. Didn’t I say Turkey was cool? The rooms feel like small houses (2-3 large rooms for each set of travelers) and maybe most importantly you pay with Turkish Lira. One drawback, however, is due to the religious people in Turkey, if you plan on staying in east Turkey, a man and a woman traveling together better be married because most places won’t let you stay at them.
Finally. Back to the original reason I am writing this “comment.” Climbing up the pyramids.
St. Patty’s Day 2019 I started my journey in Chris’s international home city, Barcelona, and then moved on to Madrid. After leaving Madrid it was on to Tangier, Morocco, where I stayed in a hostel, and where I met 3, 19 to 22-year-old boys all from different European countries, 1 from England, and only 2 of them knew each other before Morocco. We walked around the city the first day at the hostel I stayed at. At one point they bought some oranges and we sat down on a little grassy area in the middle of the city to eat them. I had OJ many times before as it is a staple in America and I was born and lived in Florida my whole life. I had no clue how delicious an orange could taste (if you like fruit you need to take a trip to the Mediterranean countries,) it seemed like the most delicious orange I had, had in my life.
The next day we added a couple of young girls to our team of international wandering walkers from even more European countries and went on you guessed it, a walk. At one point we were very close to a body of water, you may have heard of it, the Atlantic Ocean. Right next to a steep in my mind mountain and the young kids decided to walk up (standing straight up like it was a flat surface) the "mountain," well maybe not a mountain to them but definitely to me. I was wearing blue jeans and a long-sleeved red shirt. One of the girls was a little scared and she was semi-crawling up the mountain. But me? I HAD NO CLUE even after being alive for 45 years that I was scared of heights. I was very close to dragging my belly on the ground while crawling up on all fours at a very slow pace. About halfway up the redheaded British kid says, in a very heavy British accent, “Sam you look ah’bit like Spi-erman.” As hilarious as it was I wasn’t laughing as I was still SCARED AS HELL crawling up to where the rest of the kids were waiting for me. They were all watching, not sure if they were worried or just thought it was funny, that this old-fogy scaredy-cat from America was taking this long to crawl up to the rest of them.
The end.
P.S. Professor Bolelli, you recently brought up that crazy ass person that got kicked off Twitter. I wanted to say I am very glad to say with your discount I bought one of his backpacks before he went off the VERY-VERY-VERY DEEP END. I use it all the time, especially when I go back and forth across the pond to Florida and Turkey.
awesome travel story!
Nice. I was in many of the same places around that time: Isla Mujeres, Merida, Palenque, San Cristobal de las Casas. I don't remember any talkative Italian kids, but it's funny to think we may have crossed paths. Glad you got to go back.
That is rather trippy. maybe we did :)
I time traveled with u today Daniele. Thank u.
Love your story! Nice guy this Red Monk (Dutch or Belgian?)
Mexican