Landed in Nairobi.

An unexpected stop in Istanbul

Somewhere between arriving at the airport in New York and landing in Turkey, we decided to make use of our 8-hour layover in Istanbul. We paid our USD 20 for the visas and hopped on the Metro to the old city. One of the main tram lines between Zeytinburnu and Kabatas conveniently leads you to many of the main attractions. Our highlights included Sultanahmet (a 17th century mosque known as the Blue Mosque), the Hagia Sophia, and a short hunt for the tastiest and most moist baklava.

We're off...

Boarded and ready for our ten hour flight to Istanbul

Born Free

When I was a kid, long before I had a say in how my room was decorated, there was a small bookshelf with books that were also mostly not of my choosing. One of those books was Born Free, the true account of a lioness who was found as an orphaned cub, raised and eventually released into the wild by conservationists Joy and George Adamson in Kenya. Born Free sat on my shelf for many years before I pulled it down. While it's really about the bond that forms between Elsa (the lioness) and the Adamsons, I ended up becoming much more fascinated --and terrified-- by the hunt for a man-eating lion in the book's opening chapter. I may have paid more attention to this rather well-regarded book, but the travel bug hadn't bitten me yet and Kenya wasn't on my bucket list back then.

A few years ago though, when Dixie and I were discussing possible honeymoon destinations, the idea of traveling to East Africa really intrigued us. It was particularly exciting because we never agreed on anything...this was a trip we definitely wanted to do. In the end, we decided to take a much larger amount of time off and instead travel to India to work for a bit there. Africa, we decided, would have to wait. Until now.

Like last year, we're showing up with little else planned beyond our return flight home and a very-thoroughly read Lonely Planet travel guide in our packs. We leave on Tuesday and arrive in Nairobi on Wednesday after a day's layover in Istanbul.