Rafting 2004

The annual Joe and Matthew rafting trip finally happened a month after it should have done. 8 hardy souls ventured up to the Merced river, stopping only to have tea on the way (too many Englishmen on board);

3 Englishman (and a New Jersey Jew) stop for tea as demanded by tradition

... and then having an outrageous amount of food and wine at a camp with no bears.

Mass Dinner; Mass Mess, with

TURKEY TRIP 4: Olu Deniz

So we finally staggered out of Capadoccia, a beautiful and great place. The next stop was a quick night in a very dodgy hotel in Istanbul. And after that we flew down to Dalaman and took a quick hop with a licensed bandit in a taxi to Olu Deniz. Olu Deniz is a seaside town full of English oiks where you can buy a full English breakfast and where the locals are amazed to hear anyone even try to

Turkey Trip 3: Cappadoccia

You may notice that the photos have changed slightly as I'm now using Blogger's new photo upload service, which appears to be very clever and also means that I don't have to host the photos on my website. So the first one is Sarah in Cappadoccia.

Sarah smiles in Cappadocia

We got to Cappadocia after a little too much drama with air tickets for the wrong day, and terrible food poisoning which

Turkey Trip 2: Istanbul

So we eventually got driven to the airport in Izmir and flew to Istanbul. After a quick nap to work off the Raki, we hit the Blue Mosque, which is only blue on the inside.



Next stop was into the Basilica Cistern, a huge underground water cistern built by the Byzantines and not discovered by the Ottomans until years after their conquest.



Later we made it to the Grand Bazaar, and then out

Turkey Trip 1

After extricating ourselves from Diana's post birthday brunch, we eventually made it to Gatwick for the plane to Bodrum airport. After paying most of our holiday money to a licenses bandit in a taxi we had a quick night in Milas, and took several buses to Selcuk, near Epehsus. There we fell into the company of Zeki a pension-owning, carpet- and jewellry-selling lunatic. We had a long day

Holiday recap 1: London

OK so now I'm back and jetlagged at 1 am and can put up all those photos from my trip!

Sarah and I flew to London on April 29. We started off with a great dinner with my family, and then zipped up to London where we went to the Cathederal at Stamford Bridge and saw Chelsea beat Southampton 4 - 0.



Then it was out to dinner with a host of friends including Diana, Jenny, Carter, Gabrielle and