I was hot air ballooning over Cappadocia in central Turkey when it began to snow…”

Before I go any further you have to admit that that is a really cool way to begin a story. And Turkey is a really cool place to go. OK… back to the story…

I was hot air ballooning over Cappadocia in central Turkey when it began to snow. We left our 4-star cave hotel before sunrise (that’s right, our hotel was in a cave) and had spent the last 45 minutes quietly floating over a landscape reminiscent of Luke Skywalker’s home planet, a creased and folded volcanic moonscape whose ancient valleys were dotted with isolated olive groves and hermit’s caves.

Our small group joked with the pilot as the sun came up, but we knew something was not quite right when he stopped joking with us, said something like, “This has never happened before…” the sun disappeared, snowflakes began swirling around the balloon, and both the pilot and his assistant began a serious conversation in Turkish, followed by what could be assumed to be a rather frantic conversation over their radio with the ground crew. I don’t speak Turkish, but the combination of their sudden intensity, plus the fact that we kept having the same cliff appear and re-appear out of the increasingly heavy snowfall, made us realize that, hey… this is really happening.

The pilot turned to us and said in English, “Brace yourself,” and I had just a second to think, “What?” before we rapidly descended into a remote valley, hit an olive tree, and suddenly were jolted by the impact of the very solid ground. Amazingly, we did not flip over. Instead, all of us passengers did what we thought we should do: panic and jump out of the basket. Unfortunately this was not a great idea because the sudden lightening of the load meant that our pilot started to go back up like the Wizard of Oz on his way back to Kansas. We jumped back on the edge of the basket and tried to pull the thing back down, but only succeeded when the ground crew, who had just sprinted about a mile up the valley, caught up to us and jumped on too.

After making sure the balloon was stable and everyone accounted for, we let go and the pilot, waving, ascended up into the snowstorm and disappeared in the clouds. Guided by the ground crew, we hiked out of the surreal snow-dusted valley (it was really cool) and made it back alive to breakfast. Since I am able to tell this story, it is an adventure, not a tragedy. Good times.

Turkey. Why Turkey?

Another vignette. Located near the Mediterranean coast, Ephesus is one of the best preserved Roman ruins in the world (and can even be rented out for private parties!). We were lucky enough to be there on a beautiful warm day in late March just a few days before the cruise ships started their season. Consequently, instead of thousands of tourists walking up and down the streets, posing for pictures, and looking for the bathrooms, we were close to being the only ones there. Pretty spectacular. Red poppies and spring flowers were in bloom all throughout the ruins as we walked undisturbed over the mosaics and through the neighborhoods that once teemed with Roman life around the 1st century AD. You could really get a feel for how the city was laid out and how life there must have been pretty amazing for their times. And like I said, you can rent the place for a private party.

We had the opportunity (by waiting until the guard with a machine gun went for a smoke break) to enter the 22,000-seat amphitheatre still used for concerts (Elton John played there a few years back) after 2000 years. I stood on the stage and spoke in a completely normal tone of voice while my daughters went to the very back row. The acoustics are so advanced they could hear every word. Very cool. Don’t build ‘em like they used to.

Istanbul (aka Byzantium and Constantinople) has more layers of history than… well, whatever a good metaphor would be for a thing with lots of layers. The adjective byzantine, as in incredibly complex and complicated, refers to the complexities of an Empire with one foot in Europe and one in Asia (byzantine, Byzantium- get it) The point I am trying to make is that when you throw all of these influences, empires, religions and philosophies on top of one another, the result is one of the most interesting cities in the world. It’s modern with all of the facilities one would expect in a great city, and certainly everything you need to have a successful meeting or incentive. At the same time it feels ancient and mysterious as if the ghosts of history are eternally acting out their scenes all around you.

Any stereotypical reason you have for not considering Turkey is wrong. What can I say?

More vignettes… walking through the Grand Bazaar, probably the largest indoor mall in the world. Has something like 4,300 stalls selling everything you could possibly imagine, and has been in continuous operation for over 500 years. People bartering, yelling, laughing, sipping strong coffee or sweet tea, porters carrying huge loads on their backs, and an entire spectrum of color, sound and smell. And that doesn’t even include the nearby Spice Market.

Buying carpets… sitting, sipping that same damn sweet tea, while teams of skilled carpet-throwers entertained us with some of the most beautiful hand-made rugs I have ever seen. They flipped them over and around and back and forth so you could see how the colors changed, and soon the entire room was covered several layers deep. Of course I bought one. Don’t have it anymore :( , but that’s more about me than you want to know.

The food was extraordinary everywhere we went. As the Ottoman Empire stretched throughout the Middle East and North Africa, the chefs of the Pashas became expert in combining the individual cuisines into one unique and grand cuisine. You’ll be very pleasantly surprised. Really.

Throw in a deluxe cruise on the Bosporus, a visit to the Blue Mosque, exploring the underground cistern system that the Romans built and lay hidden for about 1,500 years (oops), and about a zillion other things. Ask me what to do and where to go. I liked it, a lot.

One last vignette… I took my daughters to a hookah bar. Tobacco, what did you think? Apparently it is a tradition among the young men of Turkey to hang out there and socialize. The locals thought it kind of funny that some American tourist was there with his daughters, so they helped us figure out how to do it correctly. Besides being a very different thing to do, my daughters could not get over their Dad smoking a water pipe with them. We had a great time and then felt sick and nauseous and went back to our hotel room to lie down. Good times.

For picutres of my visit to Turkey, please visit my Facebook Page at www.facebook.com/thecramercollection.