Taking time to sketch visual reminders of our 4 weeks in Turkey.

After 13 years I’ve packed out life into a storage unit and sold the house for the next adventure.

Our Mandala bedroom wall mural, a joint effort that took a couple of weeks to complete but well worth the effort.

Returning to Turkey and a house full of clothes. I’m not sure whether to focus on unpacking or packing clothes away.

Leaving Bodrum amid Blue Skies to start the first leg of our journey to Istanbul for an overnight stay.

Street art of two kids on a bike in Bodrum’s Avenue Shopping Centre that I spotted when I stopped by for a Starbucks.

This time of year on the Bodrum Peninsula is blissful. The tourists have all returned home and all we’re left with are the locals and expats. While some of the businesses have closed or have invoked winter opening hours, there’s still enough life left to keep us fed and entertained.

Little did we realize that when we harvest grapes in the morning, that they’d be the same grapes that saved us from dehydration during an afternoon trip to the beach.

House Sitting adventures in Turkey with Herbie the Cat and Tommy the Tortoise. I’m not sure who’s moving slower in this summer heat!

I was enjoying a simple but tasty Turkish breakfast the other morning in Gümüşlük. Even there we’re in peak season…

House Sitting for Herbie again in Turkey .. amid searing heat and earthquakes. It’s nice to be back here, despite the shake, rattle and roll action.

If you fancy a lighthearted read about Turkey – try my Turkey Tales, it’s available to download from Amazon. (and for a limited time only – it’s free).

From Travel Guides to a Poetic Travel Memoir I write travel guides about the Bodrum Peninsula, and built a popular…

After a barren winter with barely a sighting of another human life form in the neighbourhood for months, it has been exciting to see the influx of visitors arriving into their summer homes on our complex. They’re new arrivals for the season, in search of a respite from the heat of Turkish cities like Istanbul, Izmir and Ankara.

Brilliant to be featured in Leyla Ergil’s roundup of Travel Guides about Turkey written by Expats in the Daily Sabah, an English language newspaper in Turkey.

Although we’re registered on with a couple of house sitting sites, we still manage to pick up local assignments through word of mouth. Here’s our pet sit news for Tilki and Sari in Gumusluk.

Here’s a recent poem “A quiet place to write in Gumusluk” about the special spot I escape to gaze at the view and get creative with words.

Find out what happened when we invited Laurel and Hardy to fit our bathroom door jam and door. Nothing’s ever simple in Turkey!

Little did we anticipate that the rain on our windscreen signalled the arrival of the armageddon-like weather that descended upon the Bodrum Peninsula as we slept soundly in our beds.

We were Going to go Cold Turkey on Starbucks, but then discovered a Starbuck at Yalikavak Marina, Bodrum. Americano anyone?

We picked the black olives from our Bodrum olive tree and then followed a “oil cured” olive recipe that called for lots of salt. And not oil.

A deserted International Terminal at Bodrum greeted us, and our cases had one last road-trip before making it up the last leg of our garden path.

Santa Monica Sister Cities Association has reached out to Bodrum to request a Sister City alignment. Find out more about this partnership, and how I have been blazing the trail of Citizenship Diplomacy for years.

Excerpt from my Author Interview at Blog Expat: I survived the Moonies, and vowed to myself I’d return to the States one day. Back home, I met and fell in love with London, and enjoyed a long, fruitful and gloriously eventful relationship with that fabulous city.