Thinking back to Istanbul

View from Galata Tower

Our trip to Istanbul last year is something that really stood out for me when I look back at our travels. Turkey was the first country we visited with Audrey that we didn’t go to to spend time with friends, catch up with family or try to squeeze a bunch of cities into a small amount of time. Simply put, it was our first family holiday to one of the closest & interesting destinations we could find on the map. So here is what we did:

// We rented a room through Airbnb (seriously this just never disappoints!) close to the Museum of Modern Art. It was spacious, well located, and had a little kitchenette which is always a win when you travel as a family.

// We went during Eid which means that this trip was just over a year ago! How crazy. Audrey was crawling but still very much a baby. Having photos of your kids whilst travelling really put the passing of time in perspective. I remember when we bought those yellow leather shoes at a small local shop as we were strolling around the streets and just how cute she looked in her first pair of shoes.

Tokapi Palace

Loved all the beautiful patterns and designs

// At some point before we travelled there I remember reading this post from aCupofJo about parenting in Turkey. I loved reading about the culture and when we arrived in Istanbul so many things rang true about what I had read. When you visit Istanbul with a blond blue eyed baby, be prepared to have total strangers stop you, pick up your baby, kiss them, walk around with them, give them treats and more kisses before handing them back. When we arrived at the airport, the first security guard we passed picked Audrey up from her stroller and kissed her on the cheek! Everywhere we walked people would stop us to say ‘Hi’ to Audrey or to pinch her cheek and she has never received so many ‘Mashallah’s’ in her life..even coming from the UAE.

// No surprise here but Istanbul is such a culturally rich city, you can really spend your entire holiday there. We had an amazing time visiting museums, mosques and heritage sites and I really felt that we had more that enough to see and do every day. Hagia Sophia was a highlight. What an astonishing beautiful and interesting place.

View from one of the windows of Hagia Sophia

Hagia Sophia

Sultan Ahmed Mosque

Galata Tower

Dinner in front of Galata Tower

// We loved having turkish breakfast & turkish coffee and the baklava really is out of this world. We found a little coffee shop close to the Spice Market and actually went back there three mornings to have coffee, pastries and turkish delight. Thats the nice thing about staying in one spot for some time, you get to know the local baker or shop owner and get into a little routine while exploring a new place.

// Istanbul is a fiercely busy city especially during holiday times and close to main attractions. I remember standing at the Blue Mosque and just staring at all the people. Luckily Audrey was still content in her carrier or travel stroller and we did not have to chase a toddler who saw a pigeon through the crowds.

// The best thing I bought during our trip was a set of turkish towels. Well, technically I am not sure if they classify as towels but they are large, fold up really small and have a sarong-like feel while being thick enough to use after a swim or shower. I wish I bought one for each of our girls as well as they are just beautiful. A’s little yellow leather shoes are also high on my list as I remember chatting to the owner of the shop about his brother who hand-makes these lovely little baby shoes and all the care he puts into them. It’s a sweet reminder of the people we met and stories we shared during out time there.

These are not quite the type of towels we bought but I think the cat liked them

// I went out one night by myself while C watched Audrey sleep. I spent time at a little restaurant paging through magazines that I could not understand any of the writing while drinking orange infused tea with little purple flowers floating in my cup. I recommend spending some time by yourself while travelling. It gives you time to just sit and observe and reflect.

Some more snaps of our time in Istanbul..

Basilica Cistern

Thanks Istanbul, you were good to us.

Losing something you never had

So, I have been meaning to write this post for some time. To be more exact – two years and four months and three days.

It is a post about life. A post about what happens when no one else is watching.

In November 2012, we lost a baby. I was pregnant and then I was not. Highest of highs, lowest of lows. I remember lying on the bed in our doctors office and the moment before she started with the ultrasound I got this nauseating feeling. In that second I knew that something was wrong and I was right. The next day I found myself curled up on a hospital bed with tear stained cheeks clenching my husbands hand.

During the days that followed, I cried so much that it felt like my brain was going to push through my skull. It sounds dramatic, but that is exactly the way I remember it. I cried when I went to sleep and I cried when I woke up. For two days C and I stayed in bed, watched ‘Walking Dead’, ate pancakes, slept, cried, talked and prayed. When I was alone I would beg God to wake me up, for it to be all a horrible dream.

Things got better as time went on. Some of our close friends knew about what we were going through, many of them didn’t. I was soon pregnant again and our lives took some crazy turns as we moved to a new country and took on a new adventure. A couple of months later I gave birth to the most incredible, healthy, cheeky & chubby baby girl who captured our hearts the second she came into the world. Big eyed and curious about everything around her. We were in love and all my fears could rest for a while.

Life has gone back to normal (or a new normal) and I do not think about our loss on a daily basis. But the experience has stayed with me. You see, while I was in the operating room God gave me a vision. He lifted the veil on our lives for a second and gave me a glimpse of..something. He showed me a little boy. Blue eyes, brown hair, around five years old. I saw his face in detail..a beautiful sweet face I had never seen before. Big blue eyes. It was the first thing that came to mind as I opened my eyes and I the first thing I told C about when I woke up. As time passed I have wondered about this vision, I wondered if God would one day give us this boy, if we would adopt a boy that looked like this or if this little boy was waiting for us in heaven. I don’t know. It is a mystery that I don’t dwell on too much. All that I know is in that moment I was not alone.

So this might seem like a odd time to share this, as this post has been in my drafts folder for more that a year. At some point I deleted it, and then rewrote it again. It’s deeply personal and something that is part of my story. But this post is for my friends that are hurting. It is for those friends who have been through much worse than I have and who keep doing life the best way that they know how. Your pain is real even if most people do not know about it. You are not alone and there is a God that cares deeply about you.

This post is for myself and the way that I treat people. To remind myself to pay attention to the people around me and what they are going through. To realise that when someone is shutting me out or if their behaviour seems off, they are probably working through things that has nothing to do with me.

We need to be kind, we need to reach out, and we need to share our stories.

They say that it take a village to raise a child, but raising a child starts long before he or she is born.

Hong Kong

As we are on our way to Turkey tomorrow, I reckoned today is as good a time as any to post some photos about our previous trip. Yeah, I am super slow like that. I have also not forgotten about my ‘Appreciate the Desert‘ challenge and I am taking it all in and writing it down, just not in blog format. Maybe one day I will post more about our time here, but for now I seriously cannot find the time and our actual lives are taking precedence over this little edited corner on the web – as it should. Life has been good though, crazy busy, but good.

So..Hong Kong:

Our main reason for visiting Hong Kong was to visit good friends of ours. That, and it seemed like a pretty interesting place to explore. It really felt like a once in a lifetime opportunity to have friends show us around (and to save on a week’s worth of hotel bills in the process – thanks guys!). Kevin & Lindsay have been living in HK for about two years and the last time we saw them was in Dubai earlier this year when they arranged a 24hour layover on their way to holiday in SA. It was such a fun day. We left Al Ain at 7am in the morning and only got back to our hotel at 2am the next day. We loved it & C and I learnt some pretty neat skills as new parents, namely how to do a bedtime routine in Mall of the Emirates and how to rock a baby to sleep while eating curry at our favourite Indian restaurant in Deira. Win-win.

Anyway, our trip to HK was pretty great. Here are the things that stood out to me:

// It is a very dynamic city. It is super busy and densely populated. I might be generalising here but overall people seem very career driven and work long days at a fairly fast pace.

// Spaces are t.i.n.y. We expected as much, but you can only really appreciate it when you see it for yourself. Our hosts’ two bedroom apartment is all and all a little bit smaller than our living room back in AA, which illustrates both how small HK spaces but also how massive the places are here!

// From what we could gather, most people in HK do not cook very often. Kitchens are..well..very small, and I think the long working hours & amazing street food contributes greatly to the take-away culture.

// The city has a lot to offer. I am sometimes really frustrated with the lack of options in our town. In HK we found everything from super impressive architecture, great views, a buzzing city centre, sculpted gardens, exhibitions, parks, playgrounds, hiking trails, beaches and beautiful nature spots. It has it all.

// The heat was not as bad as I imagined. I will admit that it took some convincing to get me to go on holiday to a place with 87% humidity when I was trying to escape summer in the desert, but it was actually quite manageable. We were outside pretty much the entire day, walking around and using public transport and I never felt uncomfortable. A fair amount of sweating, yes, but when you can wear sleeveless summer dress it’s really not so bad. Compared to covering my knees and shoulders every day it was bliss, actually.

// HK is super paranoid about hygiene. I am talking elevator buttons that gets sanitised every hour and people who wear masks when the have the flu. It is awesome. As a self-confessed germaphobe, I definitely appreciated this little fact. It is however still a big city and has the usual big city odours/smells, but things are overall were well kept and clean. People are also not allowed to eat on public transport. Again, awesome.

// It’s a tight squeeze. When you get on a bus you actually have to pick your baby up and collaps your stroller. There is no ‘pram parking’ on busses. I imagine this being quite tricky when using public transport alone with a baby / toddler or a baby + toddler..yikes.

// The glass-bottom cable car we took up to see the Tian Tan Buddha was one of the best experiences of my life. Truly beautiful.

Looking at the photographs I feel like there are so many stories that these pictures don’t tell. My favourite snaps where of little design elements and graphics that we saw while we walked around which I will hopefully post here soon. After 10days of walking around the city, I left inspired about design and just life in general. It just has that kind of energy.

The best part by far was however getting to spend time with our friends. To get a glimpse of what their life is like in a foreign country and to share new experiences with them.

It was a good trip.