We are just back from a major trip to Turkey, Greece, and Sardinia!

This trip happened because of an invitation from our brother-in-law to join him on a charming Turkish Gulet (a large sailboat) that he chartered to celebrate his 70th birthday. His guest list included his wife and two kids, his brother and his brother’s wife, and his wife’s two brothers, (of which my husband is one), along with me and our two daughters (as well as including our oldest daughter’s boyfriend), and my husband’s brother, along with his two married kids and their spouses, each respectively with a child, (one was two years old and the other 9 months- both were absolute angels the whole time). So there were nineteen of us all together. The boat had 10 bedrooms, and a crew of seven, including a good chef. We also had a delightful tour guide from Eon tours, which augmented our experience a lot.

This trip was a hugely generous gesture, and we had a ball together, with lots of fun in beautiful and interesting places, as well as enjoying plenty of time for family bonding.

This lovely trip with my in-laws was 10 days, starting with a couple days in Istanbul, then included a flight to Bodram, where we got on the boat for a week, touring the coast of Turkey and dipping into the Greek islands of Simi and Rhodes. All of it was a truly amazing, and was a huge privilege.

After all this, since we were already in the Mediterranean, my husband, older daughter, and her partner, added on a side trip to Cappadocia, while our younger daughter and I rented a very affordable place in a stone house on a mountainside in Sardinia for ten days, where my husband joined us after going to Cappadocia. There we hiked in the mountains, saw caves, and swam in more glorious turquoise water.

All together, is was meant to be 20 days, but our flight home from Amsterdam was cancelled, extending the trip by a an extra day. We had a wonderful time: a mixture of family, incredible coastline, and gorgeous water!

So for the next couple weeks on this blog, I’ll be sharing my trip photos with you. In this post, you can see us arriving in Istanbul, and beginning to meet up. We had a view of the Hagia Sophia out our hotel window, and had a rooftop dinner overlooking the Blue Mosque at sunset.

We are all so grateful both for this incredible opportunity, for this terrific family, the harmony and joy everyone expressed, as well as the great itinerary in wonderful places, which I never imagined I would get to see!