Shinoo, please stop it. Kya ultay seedhay sawaal poochti hau. Just read the travelogues yaar. You just can't prepare for such trips. Leave the element of surprise too.
OK, I am just BS'ing. You may continue with your questions now.
Fungi leave me alone 
I would like to know if they did anything special to prepare themselves, like pre-planned everything or just decide what they wanted to do as they arrived in a new place.
This is nothing, I have a lot more questions :o
Sorry for not responding guys. My dada jee passed away on the 1st and I left my in laws to go to my maika then, super busy with mahmaan and i'm on super slow connections in kashmir. I'll be in PK until after the chalam so will post pics later...
with regards to your questions.
We did travel before we got married, but usually in North America like to Alaska, I have travelled a bit alone but was not allowed nor comfortable to really go to far out of n. america so did mexico with college friends, etc. This trip was on our 1 year anniversery.
Going to russia was not my idea and i was very worried about it, of course i was pleasantly and positively surprised. :) We both had our lists for places to visit, we did morocco and s. spain/andalusia last december and both wanted to do turkey too..then we just looked around russian and turkey and picked an easy country to get to that we were interested in. With regards to the cities, we used loney planet guides for each country and read about the cities and picked where we wanted to go. Outside of our airline tickets, hostels in russia (b/c we heard it was peek season and housing is imited) we did not pre book alot more than 1-2 days ahead of time. This was peak travel season but we found vacancies in Italy alot and Turkey more so, so we could bargain down a bit...
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*Originally posted by CurruptAngel: *
Just curious, how much did the whole trip cost?
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My husband did track our costs, he is suppposed to put it ito quicken and we'll have a break down of the costs, i'll let you know then.
we did luck out on airline tickets, we used our mileage miles to buy open jaw. a ticket that took us from frankfurt to moscow, moscow to venice then a 2nd rome to istanbul istanbul to frankfurt ticket, these would have been expensive tickets to buy but thru mileage they were the same mies as a round trip ticket in the US...CHEAP and FREE!
Preparations
Good guide books
check out the backpackers websites also bugeurope.com is awesome for ideas too.
PACK LIghT!!!!! i had 2 pairs of pants, 3 shirts, 2 tanks, 2 skirts,good sports sandles and tennis shoes all in one big back pack and you find out you really don't need as much.
We saw everything we wanted, to be honest, we were pretty tired by the end, moving every 2/3 days or in some cases daily is rough and traveing is tiring....we will eventually go back to turkey and russia to seemore sites...
it really depends on you with regards to pace, places and interest. we were gong to do the leaning tower of pisa but discovered that it wasn't that big of deal and in our minds wasn't worth the travel time losts so we skipped that to go onto to our next location...we loved naples so we chose not to do assisi to spend another 2 days in naples.
To be honest, we also would sit with our guide book on the train/plane to the city and decide what we were gong to do..it worked fine for us. :)
I am sorry to hear about your grand father amelie.
It was great to read your travelogue, I iwll agree with shinoo, its cute :-) I definately am interested in going to Italy at least with so much cultural heritage to experience. Your travelogue has only helped increase the urge. One day insha'allah! Do share picture when you are back to states.
amelie,
I'm sorry to hear about your dada jaan, may allah swt grant him jannah.
Thanks so much for your reply. Very interesting!
Cost of total trip was $ 8500 with a free ticket for me to frankfurt PLUS free flights from moscow to turkey to frankfurt...
More of my logs...from the beginning..
Salaam all, I'm writing you from tikal, Guatamala... It is very hot and humid here, the hotel has a semi outdoor restaurant, we can hear the sounds of the rain forest outside despite the Latin music inside...there are howling monkeys here that you can hear screech!
It’s really beautiful here...we saw Tikal Mayan ruins today...amazing what these people were doing 1000-3000 years ago..I climbed up to the top of one of the temples some 200 feet up....and got caught in a rain storm when taking the stairs down...we were soaked!!!
The food is amazing, chicken, rice, veggies...very yummy... we are off to Belize tomorrow...electricity gets shut off at 9pm so I’m going to go get ready :)
Hi all, Things are fantastic here!!! I forgot to tell you in the last email how much our experience has been heightened by the types of transportation we've taken... on Sunday we went from Belize city to Flores Guatemala to see tikal. we chose to fly to save time, we were the only two passengers on the afternoon flight so we got to sit in a single engine plane with H in the front seat with the captain! it was amazing!!! from Flores/tikal we returned to Belize city by bus...with a Spanish speaking driver who left us at the b order to go through passport/customs and then met us on the other side...old style bus with tons of people in it.. mostly tourist. lucky for us our bags that were put on top of the bus didn't bounce off..though they were a bit dusty....
We stayed one night in Belize city...had great Caribbean beans/rice and chicken...saw a Turkish casino/hotel (we know it's Turkish b/c of the Turkish flag outside, the painting of the owner and the buffet had horrible Turkish food...and tons of Turks coming to eat there...how odd.
The next day, we took a water taxi to caye cauker..they gave us these huge plastic sheets as we started and I thought..how nice...to protect us from water that splashes..of course we hit one of those summer storms and it POURED on us! caye cauker is amazing...beautiful small town..on a small island. we can walk from one end to the other.. there are 4 main streets that go length wise on the island,
front street,
middle street,
back street and
WAY back street :)
there are loads of locals and tourist, everyone is friendly and the food is yummy...we've had lobster, conch, fish ....
Today we took an all day snorkeling sailboat. the sailboat was amazing. to be honest, I never thought I would enjoy a whole day on a boat but we had fun..the sailboat was so easy, soothing and relaxing and the weather was gorgeous!. surprisingly I did well snorkeling...our guide took us out 3 times...each time taking us around , showing fish..and telling us what they were..We swam out to the reef at the edge of caye cauker, went to a marine preserve between amergese and cauker cayes...saw sharks, touched stingray!!! Loads of beautiful fish... the sail boat people had plenty of juice, tropical fruit, sandwiches for lunch and amazing seafood ceveche for snack on the way back... you may not be surprised to know that we are also very very brown now. :) Tomorrow we're off to ambergris caye, for tutti's wedding. It’s a 20-30 min water taxi ride and then we're off to Toronto in 3 days!
hey Amelie!
I am planning a trip to Turkey in December for a week!! Thanks for the info. We are planning on going to Istanbula and Anatalya. Let's see how much we can cover in 7 days :)
Any tips or pointers? I know I always pack light too!
Hey!
Loads of info..
first how do you plan to go from istabul to antalya? plane? if so perfect, much faster and less hectic
antalya is GORGEOUS....big modern city right next the ocean with mountains...just breathtaking. we stayed in the old city at a pension that was lovely, i had a turkish bath and ate lovely food.
hmmmm get ahold of lonely planet turkey and follow their instructions on what to see...
while in antalya, if you have time try to get to the chiamera near olympos, it's about 2 hour bus ride away...
Oh my, i'm jay-lous.
Amelie, please post pictures.
Awesome! Thanks for the info. My friend’s home town is close to Anatalya so I’ll be flying in and out of her town and stay w/ her folks for the weekend. I’ll let her know I want to visit the seaside (in dec. lol! and the chiamera!) My friends are helping me plan the trip out and since one of them will be there, she will take me around Istanbul and other places. I’ll be there for 10 days 
TOO EXCITED 