July 2020 Month In Review: Roadtripping Through South Turkey, Returning Back to Ukraine, and What's Next

Hello hello, my dear adventurers! Long time no see, right?

If you’ve been hanging around this blog for a long time, you might remember some of my previous month in review blog posts (and year in review posts, but that’s a different story).

Now that I have some free time (and the fact that my life is more interesting than it was 2 years ago 🙃), it’s time to bring it back!

To give you a little backstory: At the beginning of spring, we planned to do a month-long road trip across Turkey, starting in Istanbul and ending somewhere along the Turkish Riviera (Antalya or Izmir). We packed our bags, bought a one-way ticket, and voila.

The first three weeks were going as planned: we spent 10 days exploring Istanbul and getting to know it better (it’s one of my favorite cities in the world!), then ferried over to Bursa, saw some modern art in Eskisehir, wandered aimlessly around Ankara, and took a flight to Trabzon.

And then coronavirus hit. Hard.

We were on our flight to Antalya the day that Turkey closed their borders, which meant that we were effectively stuck in the country for the time being. We sucked it up, rented an Airbnb, and for the next three months we were in quarantine as Turkey battled the coronavirus. I’ll have another post up soon about the entire situation and what life was like in Turkey during quarantine, but for now, I’ll focus on the last month and how we left. :)

THIS MONTH IN TRAVEL

🇹🇷 The Turkish Riviera 🌴 Istanbul 🕌 Ukraine 🥟

Two weeks or so after Turkey eased restrictions around travel, Ukraine (my home country and home base) opened its borders. Since we were in Antalya, we planned to do one last hurrah and “officially” finish our road trip around the country that we started 4 months ago. To make it as socially-distanced as possible, we rented a car, opted to go to less-crowded places, and wore masks every time we were outside. Here’s how our route looked like:

Antalya ➡️ Kas ➡️ Fethiye ➡️ Marmaris ➡️ Kusadasi ➡️ Selcuk ➡️ Izmir

To make it easier to read, I broke down our trip into sections :)

Antalya — Even though we were “stuck” in Antalya, I didn’t expect that it would be so bittersweet to leave the city that we called home for the last three months. We picked up our car in the morning and decided to explore the area around Antalya first. One of the best “hidden gems” that we found were the Myra Ruins, which was originally a Greek/Byzantine town way back in the day. The ruins here have been preserved so well that most of the faces are still there. Check out the photo above to get a good idea of what I’m talking about :)

Fun fact: One of the first Greek bishops in Myra was Saint Nicholas (better known as Santa Claus)!

Kas — Ahhh, Kas. We didn’t have much information about our next city, but we fell in love after the first day. This sweet town (literally — there are only about 7,200 people living here) is the epitome of a fairytale village if it were set in Turkey. Cobblestone streets, colorful pink flowers cascading over old houses, and a beautiful waterfront where boats gently lull about. Can you get any more romantic than this?

It turned out that Kas became our favorite city on this whole trip! It’s the right mix of cafes, a laid-back atmosphere, and gorgeous turquoise beaches. I’m kicking myself that we only spent one night here, but I’m already planning a trip back. 😉

I think what really makes Kas a “hidden gem” is that it’s a bit hard to get to. It’s in between two large cities (Antalya and Fethiye) and there are only a few busses that go every day, which doesn’t make it that popular for day trips. Speaking of Fethiye…

Fethiye — I’m not sure if it were my high expectations after Kas or the fact that we started off on the wrong foot, but Fethiye just didn’t do it for me. We arrived later in the evening (around 9PM or so) and tried to find parking for a good 30 minutes or so. If I thought San Francisco had it bad with its parking situation, apparently Fethiye could be a worthy opponent. 😅

Anyway, we parked our car, tried to find our hotel, and … nothing. The hotel that we booked apparently didn’t show up correctly on Google Maps and we had to walk a mile there, check in, walk a mile back, get our car, and park closer. The next day we decided to walk around Fethiye and check out the local attractions but besides the umbrella-lined street, there wasn’t much else going for it. Next time I think we’ll stay in Oludeniz.

Marmaris — Similar to Fethiye, Marmaris was another ‘meh’ city. I’m sure it’s a lovely option for those who like nightlife and beaches, but we found it to be too resort-like and more of a tourist trap. One thing that I really loved was our hotel (Uysal Motel) — the owners were extremely friendly, it had that “family business” charm, and, best of all, it had a view of the beach outside our window (😱!!)

Kusadasi — Kusadasi was on my list of places to visit all the way back when we were still planning our trip. The reason? There’s a hill with colorful houses! The story goes that there was a neighborhood on the brink of being demolished, but a paint company stepped in, painted the 400+ houses in different colors, and it became a source of tourism and revenue for that neighborhood.

Getting to Kusadasi was a different story. At first everything went fine, but once we were close to the hotel, it felt like the entire city turned into a giant, one-way hill. With cars and motorcycles coming straight at you. All while Google Maps is glitching and keeps redirecting me every 5 seconds. But that’s not even the best part… After circling around the Hills of Hell, we found a decent parking lot. Until we parked inside. the whole thing looked like a bunch of concrete slabs glued together, and one wrong move and the whole thing would topple down. They should use Kusadasi as a training arena for driving students. 😅

Selcuk — We planned to use Selcuk as just a place to stay, and to visit the nearby Sirince as the ‘main attraction.’ However, we loved our hotel so much that we ended up cutting our day in Sirince and going back to chill in the hotel. Our suite had a hammam in the bathroom. Like, an actual marble bench, authentic hammam bowls, and a streaming fountain hammam. Can you believe it?

But that’s not all… The breakfast is just out of this world. In the morning, we sat in the covered garden, drinking our tea and looking at the view of Selcuk, and dozens of dishes started appearing before our eyes. I love Turkish breakfasts and can usually finish them in one go, but we were up to our eyes in food. Different types of cheeses, meats, jam, honey, two fluffy omelettes, veggies, I can go on and on, but I’m hungry and it’s already 3AM. For those who are wondering, we stayed at this hotel.

Oh, speaking of Sirince… This was another unexpected but lovely place that we visited! It looks like something straight out of Tuscany, with its winding cobblestone streets, thick forest-colored trees sprinkled everywhere, and brown-and-white houses jutting out of the hills. But perhaps the most surprising thing was that Sirince is famous for its wine! Even though wine isn’t that popular across Turkey (there are high taxes on alcoholic beverages), many tourists flock to Sirince to try its world-famous wine. One of the highlights of our trip here was trying a flight of local wines that were infused with different flavors, from sour cherry to peach, blueberry, and even melon (yum!)

Izmir — And finally, Izmir. We stayed here for one day but didn’t really get to go out and explore much because we had so much work slowly piling up during our trip. Plus, we were here a year ago and just did a quick walk to reminisce about our previous spots.

From there, it was time to fly from Izmir to Istanbul, and then back home!

ISTANBUL

Istanbul was a nice stop because we gave ourselves a few “buffer” days just in case our flight was delayed or something went wrong. Plus, we freaking love Istanbul. 😅

We planned our trip in Istanbul to be relaxed and casual (unlike the first time, when we tried to cram everything into our packed itinerary lol). On our first day, we ate a traditional Turkish breakfast at a cafe near our hotel before walking over to the Museum of Modern Art. If you’re in the area, I highly recommend visiting – the museum is cool and has a very colorful and huge book store. We bought an illustrated atlas of the world to commemorate our travels. :)

The next day we stopped at Kadikoy, one of our favorite neighborhoods, to get some delicious boba tea and ramen. It was nice to explore the other half that we didn’t get to see the first time around. It’s such a cool district! It still has that Istanbul feel but with a bit of hipster and a little bit of laid backness sprinkled in. Getting there was a bit of pain in the butt (walking 2 km to the ferry station because the other one was out of service), but if you have some free time, I highly recommend checking it out!

Finally, we stopped over at the “design district” of Istanbul, Tophane. There were so many cool trinkets! There’s one street that’s almost exclusively dedicated to antique clothing and other kitsch things… Too bad we didn’t have much space in our baggage or I would have bought out an entire store. :P

Finally, it was time to go. But Turkey decided to play one last prank on us before we left…

Our flight was at 7AM, and we stayed up the whole night so that we could leave at 4AM, drive 30 minutes to the airport, and have some buffer time just in case. I felt like my dad — he usually likes to get to the airport at like 9AM when our actual flight is at 3PM “just because who knows what can happen on the way there.” 😅

Come 4AM, we ordered a taxi, grabbed our bags, skipped down the stairs, and left our key on the front desk table (it was in the middle of the night so nobody was there). I reach the handle to open the door, pull it down, and … Nothing. We were locked in.

Huh, that’s weird, I thought. We told the manager that we would be leaving at 4AM so there wouldn’t be any confusion. Maybe the guy just left to get some water and snacks at the nearby grocery store?

At this point in time, the taxi arrived and we motioned for him to try to open the door through the glass door. Nothing. We then asked him to call the manager by pointing at the business card and sliding it under the door. No answer.

It was around this time that the panic really started to set in. It was already 4:30AM and our time was slowly ticking away. What if we were stuck here for the entire night and missed our flight?

Thankfully, a woman passing by in a taxi saw the commotion, stopped the car, and, using our best hand charade skills, we tried to explain that the door was closed. To this day I’m not sure who she was (the hotel owner? Just a friend?), but she quickly phoned someone, and within seconds the front desk manager, groggy and in pajamas, walked downstairs and opened the door for us. 😁

We bordered our flight to Lviv, excited to finally go home.

UKRAINE

Coming back to Ukraine was like night and day in comparison with Turkey. The moment we landed, everybody took off their masks and stampeded out the plane. Even though wearing masks indoors was technically a law, nobody seemed to care. So much for social distancing 😅

We got into line at passport control, waiting for the worst. For the last few days, we constantly kept thinking about how we would get questioned about where we were, what we were doing there, if we had a negative PCR test, and then how we would need to download the quarantine app (Diya Doma — If you have free time, I highly recommend checking out the reviews for an entertaining read), and so on.

How long were you in Turkey? Asked the immigration officer. We answered her, she stamped our passports, and that was it. All that stress for nothing. 😅

From there, it was only a 5 hour drive until we arrived in Chernivtsi! I couldn’t wait to curl up with my boyfriend on my huge couch, make homemade matcha tea cookies, and finish the Turkish dramas that we started watching in Antalya.

LUDA’S LIFE

When we arrived, everything was going great for the first few hours. We already checked off some of the things that we planned to do at home that we dreamed up when we were in Turkey (for instance, make boba tea 🤤).

Until something felt off. At first, it was just a weird feeling, but when I went to get my headphones, there it was. Here’s an excerpt of what happened from my IG post.

“Hey, have you seen my headphones? And what’s this bottle of whiskey doing in the kitchen?” I asked my boyfriend. ⁣
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It was the first time we were back in our apartment in four months. We were so excited to finally come back to the place that we call “home” after being stuck in Turkey thanks to the pandemic. Don’t get me wrong, I love Turkey, but it was nice to be home for a change and relax and go to “our” places.⁣
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He came into the kitchen and said that he had no idea and swore we left my AirPods on the kitchen table. The more we kept looking, the more we found. ⁣

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Although everything *looked* the way we left it, there were little clues everywhere: The burned candle. The stranger’s socks hidden in my piles of clothes on the floor. The fish slippers in the middle of the living room (who haven’t seen the light of day since I chucked them into the closet a year ago 😂). ⁣
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Nobody had the keys except my landlord and I, and one of us was gone for the entire time.⁣
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So, who was here? ⁣
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To be honest, I’m writing this one month later and still have no idea. After we found out, we immediately met with our landlord, who was as shocked as we were at the news. Since we were so uneasy about the whole situation, we did what any normal person (🙃) would do: we broke off our lease, packed all of our stuff in one night (let me tell you, packing three rooms’ worth of shit is no easy feat 😅), and accidentally became full-time digital nomads. All in the middle of a pandemic. ⁣

We’re still getting used to the fact that we don’t have a “home” anymore. ⁣I don’t have a set of keys that I always take with me (even on vacation). I don’t have to pay rent twice every time I travel. Even when walking in my hometown, I still have to catch myself from absentmindedly walking back home along my usual route.
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One of the biggest advantages from this situation is that now we don’t have a place that ties us down to one location. In fact, when we were in Turkey, my boyfriend and I wanted to travel and write around our home country (Ukraine) but were unsure because we would need to pay rent twice and be away from home for most of the time.⁣

Now, we don’t have to worry about that problem. Even though one of my worst fears came true, it also opened up an entirely new opportunity to do whatever we want, wherever, and whenever we want.⁣
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We already started our small/huge trip around Ukraine and covered some ground: we started in the nearby town of Kamianets-Podilskyi before moving on to Khmelnytskyi and Ternopil. As I’m typing this recap, we’re currently based in Ivano-Frankivsk for a while before figuring out whether we want to head west (Lviv) or east (Kyiv, the capital).

ON THE BLOG

I’m not going to lie, July was a fairly stressful month from moving around so much, including traveling 600 km (370 miles) around Turkey and moving all of our stuff in Ukraine. I didn’t publish or work on any posts for this month, but I already made a checklist of what I plan to work on in the next month.

Here’s just a quick sneak peek :)

🍉 A detailed guide to the Turkish Riviera, including an itinerary and travel tips

🏙 Brainstorming and outlining mini city guides, like Kas, the Lavender Fields, Trabzon, etc. I’d love to do a huge city guide to Istanbul but that city is so dang enormous!
I’d probably need to break it down into multiple sections (where to stay, what to do in each neighborhood, etc.) but I’d love to give it a try!

🏔 Finally, finish some blog posts already in the works, like my Pokhara city guide (Nepal), as well as some packing guides.