hong kong

 back in early november, we took another international flight to china. after ivory passed away, i vowed that if i were to get pregnant again, i would stay put and not do anything that could interfere with a safe pregnancy. then i realized i couldn't live life that way so why not take two separate flights to the other side of the world instead? i was around 15 weeks when we left on this trip and i was hopeful i would be over my all day 'morning sickness.' i wasn't. on the flight there, i threw up 5 times. turbulence, tight spaces, and airplane food did not sit well with me. i had thought more than once that i should have stayed home. i went with tanner to china over a year ago and didn't like it so i'm not really sure why i decided to go again. but i was glad i did go again because i really liked it this time, even with the fatigue and sickness. i loved all the food (surprisingly?!) and the sights we got to see. i know that technically hong kong is not china, so i apologize when i refer to it as a part of china. i really liked hong kong! our hotel room was insanely teeny tiny and we were sharing with an employee from proof. our two beds were about three feet from each other with a little toilet in between them and that was literally the whole room. we were only there to sleep so it was fine. we were in hong kong for an optical show but had some free time to see the city. we first went to an area where we had a cool view of hong kongs skyline and then later that day we went to the budha. we ended the day with the light show on the water front. as always with my traveling life, it was a quick stop in hong kong before we went into china. i liked how modern and clean the city was and almost everything was translated in english which was super helpful. 

turkey // cappadocia part 2

 these pictures can speak for themselves and sums up our morning in cappadocia before we caught a flight back to istanbul. they do the hot air balloons every morning (weather permitting) and we were hoping it would fit in our schedule to ride in one but it didn't and seeing them from the top of a hill was just as cool to me. if you have read my past posts about turkey, you may have sensed a pattern that i wasn't feeling well and was exhausted. this morning was no exception when our alarm went off at 6am and i literally told tanner i did not care to go see the balloons and needed to sleep. he obviously talked me into going and said he wouldn't go if i didn't and i knew he really wanted to go..  oh the things we do for love ;) we had to walk up quite a few hills to get the view we did but watching the balloons with the sunrise was quite romantic. tanner is really good at not missing out on anything and 99% of the time, i am glad he is that way. we took a flight back to istanbul that morning, had a few hours to go to the grand bazaar, then caught another flight to paris that night. i had one day to explore paris before i went home to film a wedding. seriously, one of the fastest, jam packed trips we've taken, but worth every second. 

turkey // cappadocia

^^ do you see tanner?

 ^^ our cutest little hotel

 ^^ and we slept in a cave!

 ^^ it felt a lot bigger than this picture shows

 cappadocia was one of our favorite places we've ever been to. we took an overnight bus from pamukkale (hopefully my last overnight bus i will ever take) and spent the day in this awesome city. our hotel provided us with breakfast and then we took a tour that had four different stops. the first was an overlook of the city and then we walked through a canyon that reminded me a lot of utah. our third stop were some caves that we could explore and get an idea of how people used to live in them and the last stop was an underground fortress that was used for protection during wars. i can't remember exactly how big the fortress was but i want to say it was about 17 floors underground. people would sometimes stay in there for weeks depending on what was going on above ground with the war. it was claustrophobic being in there for the tour, let alone thinking about living in there. 

the coolest thing about this city was how it was all built into the rock. we saw parts that were lived in hundreds, thousands of years ago and then the city was more modern but still used the caves and rocks as hotels and restaurants. we want to go back with kids because i feel like it would be their imaginations dream to explore the caves and run around rocks all day. i'm not into mountain biking or anything but this would be a fun place to give it a try. we ate dinner that night in a restaurant that overlooked the city and it was just as cool at night as it was in the day. i slept like a rock that night hehe.