An Istanbul to Tbilisi to Kazbegi Odyssey – Christmas 2014, Part 2

And now, the continuation (and conclusion) of the story of the longest travel day of my life… (for Part 1, click here)

Scene 5: Didube Marshrutka Depot, 9am, Christmas Day.  We stumble into Didube metro stop and light is just breaking.  With our bags, we trudge across the dirt lot that is Tbilisi’s largest marshrutka stop.  In Georgia and Armenia, marshrutkas quickly became my favorite method of transportation – egalitarian shared buses or minivans that depart for their destination only when enough passengers board to turn the driver a profit.

TurkeyGeorgiaArmenia2-210-17

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Church and Monastery Fatigue in Armenia – Sevan and Dilijan

By our final day in Armenia, David and I were sick and tired.  I don’t mean that figuratively.  We were both actually sick and developing a tolerance for expired Russian Theraflu, and tired from sleeping on 1 thread count sheets in our “hotel” (a generous assessment if there ever was one) in Yerevan.

Ts'tesutyoon, Yerevan.
Ts’tesutyoon, Yerevan.

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Squid and Sand – Korea’s Remote Ulleung-do

During graduate school, I made several trips back to Korea, where I lived between 2006 and 2007. As opposed to just staying in Seoul the entire time (because TV and delivery Korean food is tempting), I tried to get out of the city at least once on each trip to visit a part of Korea I hadn’t seen while I lived there.

That’s how I made my way to Ulleung-do in the summer of 2010.

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