goals – Page 3 – Turknoy Travels 100!

COUNTRY 2 – Italy and Dreams

June 16, 2016July 27, 2016 by turknoys, posted in Italy, Travel Adventures

“Italy is dream… That keeps returning for the rest of your life.”– Anna Akhmatova

Magical. Beyond romantic. More than majestic.

Oh-my-God-jaw-dropping-landscapes! That basically sums up what we think of Italy. Nobody can have enough of Italy. A very beautiful and delicious country!

Together as family, we spent seven days exploring five of its famous cities – Rome, Florence, Pisa, Torino and Venice! One country, different cities all of which left different tastes of varying dreams to our subconscious!

We don’t think we will have enough of Italy. The country opened up different layers of our inner passions, provoking different reactions for our senses.

Turknoys Exploring Italy — All Senses Ready for Italy!

Italy is delicious. Uhhmm, pizza, pasta, gelato! No wonder Elizabeth Gilbert of Eat Pray and Love, ate and ate in this country! The kids enjoyed gelato in basically all the streets we went to! Aldente pasta? Yes please! Two orders of pizza for one each?! Yes please! If we didn’t attempt to walk the entire city of Rome and get lost from one bus to another, we wouldn’t have gained so much weight that the plane back home would refuse to take us!

Italy is wet and warm. It was raining every single day during one month of March when Turknoy family was there. Yet the people are accommodating and welcoming.

We were in the overnight train from France to Rome , newbie traveler with three kids in tow, we shared the cabin with an Italian drunk woman! She speak no English and commending our kids for being all so well-behaved. Honestly, it was scary for all of us , her stinky shoes, drunk breath and Italian murmurs for 4-hour train ride is what we will remember about Italy as family! Yet when the drunk Italian woman bid her goodbye at the train station with so much warmth and hospitality, it was more enough for us to fondly remember her and forget about the terror we felt inside the cabin train.

In Murano Island, Venice, where expensive Murano glass shops abound, we had to seek refuge in one of the shop, where we were politely and warmly shoo-ed away because kids might break the glasses and we obviously, can’t afford such exquisite, elegant and authentic home glass decor. How could anyone be so beautiful, posh, polite and rude at the same time?

We believe, only Italians can!

And of course, riding around Venice in a gondola with chatty handsome Italian gondolier cum historian cum actor (albeit, extra character as gondolier!) Best one-hour ride for the family ever!

Italy smells anciently magnificent. Well, the landscape, the history, the architecture, the art. It is everywhere, you can really smell the magnificence in all periods of time. From The Colosseum, to Accademia Gallery where David is to the contemporary museums of Florence everywhere top with the City of Venice! We were always left speechless any point in time during our stay in Italy, we can only smell our environment.

Italy is music to the ears. Every restaurant we went to, there were loud Italians passing orders, streets filled with music, again mixed with all the Italian accents. Can’t say anything more. We can stay in cafe and just listen to their loud conversations we can’t comprehend.

Add in the pigeons flipping their winds in

Piazza De Marco mixed in the waves of Adriatic Sea with the tapping of the rain while busy tourists talking and sipping their warm drinks.

Italy is bliss. Our senses said so.

Family Satisfaction

June 15, 2016July 27, 2016 by turknoys, posted in Family Satisfaction, Qatar, Travel Goals

“Knowing your own family and having a purpose makes the unit live and love their lives on your own family’s terms. You know you have your own family lifestyle when the family members “need to do” is defined by its own members not by anyone else telling them. “ – Turknoys

In her previous life, Turknoy Mum was a quality assurance guru in her field (subtly emphasizing here that she knows the theories of sound management in business and in life!). She used to facilitate training about “Customer Satisfaction.” Her training purpose would be to define ways how to achieve customer satisfaction in business settings. For management to be able to do that, the organization needs to articulate what the customers really need. Satisfaction comes from having the customer requirements fulfilled. Hence, the obvious challenge lies on how to define what the customers really need, directly or indirectly, stated or implied.

However, the real challenge and less obvious to most organizations before achieving customer satisfaction, prior to being fluent with defining what the customers really need is identifying who their real customers are, their target niche, who they want to satisfy in the first place.

Well, it should be obvious. Organizations can’t please everybody and they don’t have do. Their purpose is really to make money, not customer satisfaction (newsflash!). Organizations are concerned about customer satisfaction because they want to have more profit. Satisfied customers tend to be repeat customers. Plain truth, commercial businesses are not focused about how customers are treated or served, they want customers to come again for more business or want their customers to tell good things about their business to attract more customers.

Organizations have mission, purpose-driven. It should be the same for individuals. It definitely should be the same for families.

Mission and purpose which drives a unique individual should be unique.

Mission and purpose which drives a unique family unit should be, duh, unique! Every family has different requirements for their satisfaction.

Yeah, let’s talk about Family Satisfaction, traditionally known as Happily Ever After. It’s so happily ever after, it’s considered an end-game for all single eligible, smart, independent people.

Our strong and high opinion about Family Satisfaction – It’s not an end-game. It’s that “Other Level – not mandatory next level, not higher level, a different level!

It’s a choice we have to make, if we want it. Everybody can be qualified to have a family but not everyone should build a family! Not everybody wants it, we need the world to acknowledge this! Sometimes a person is destined to not have family or kids, but a lot of times, a person may not want to have family or kids!

How do we know who wants to have a family? There, there you go!! KNOW THYSELF! Like, deep-from-the-gut, straight-from-the-heart know yourself hard! If family life is not something for an individual, no amount of activities, goals or mission with the future family can satisfy or be enough to obtain happiness in life.

Turknoys — Finding yoursef is not similar to finding a lifetime partner!

And if we do want to have a family, how do we know how we can satisfy every member of family, how we do get family satisfaction? There, there you go!! KNOW THY FAMILY! Like, deep-from-the-gut, straight-from-the-heart know every member of the family hard!

Knowing our own self, and our own family is not an easy task. It means acknowledging our deepest desires in life, we were often instructed by almost every “superior” human beings and ancient institutions to hide and contain.

Finding ourselves is not a one-off process. As our family home educate, unschool, explore with kids and live our lives without worrying about non conformities, every day is a learning opportunity to get to know our passion and desires.

We are allowing our curiosity guide our way to find ourselves. So far, it has taken us to places we only imagined before.

Maybe it involves continued traveling, or maybe it involves something else.

Our family. Our terms.

We CANNNNNN GET …. OUR satisfaction. Oh, oh oh!

Let’s Be Busy Being Alive

June 14, 2016July 27, 2016 by turknoys, posted in Maldives, Philippines, Qatar, Sweden, Travel Adventures, Travel Goals

“He not busy being born is busy dying.” –Sings Bob Dylan

Every time we visit a new country or a new place or do new activity together as family, we always have that feeling of vigor, of expanding our horizon, of being reborn (in a non-radical-religious-kinda-way!)

The feeling of excitement when we stepped out of the plane and enjoy the first breath of fresh air of the country! Lots of possibilities, places to see, lots of milestones to share with kids!

The feeling of accomplishment when we perform new activity together, no matter now trivial, the exhilaration of fresh ideas coming to mind, fresh feelings of tons of possibilities shared with kids!

It makes all of us come alive.

When we arrived at Gangehi, Maldives from the seaplane to the boat going to the island, we can still vividly hear the gasps of WOW from all the passengers, it’s like we were almost in the paradise island! Well, the island is a paradise. Gangehi is one small island in the middle of the Indian Ocean isolated surrounded with nothing but water and white, fine sand. The parents were so busy admiring the islands that the kids almost fell off the ocean from the plane! (True story – but kids are good swimmers, no harm done!) Out of breath with the view, panting with excitement, every now and then pinching ourselves to make sure that it’s real, all nerves yearning to catch up with the logic of what is happening. Euphoria – that’s a nice busy feeling.

Turknoys Exploring Maldives — Setting foot on Gangehi Islands in Indian Ocean for the first time with kids!

Exactly the same feeling our family felt when we stepped out of the airplane from Stockholm to Kiruna, in the Artic part of the world. It was almost midnight, the snow everywhere, the freezing temperature, looking up at the bright sky hoping to see the Northern Lights. Again, the parents were so busy admiring the snow-covered airport runway that we didn’t notice the kids sinking their feet to the depth of the snow. (Again, true story! They did however, find this funny and kept running mindlessly around like their parents, despite being undressed in a very cold weather!) The faces of the kids, giddy moments together, definitely a treasure to remember for the rest of our living moments.

Turknoys Exploring Sweden — The morning after arrival at Kiruna – awesome moments with family!

Again, exactly the same feeling we had when we experienced our first family cart-carabao ride around the village in Indang we call home in the Philippines. Kids and parents shouting with joy and excitement looking at familiar green environment and feeling euphoric seeing goats, chickens and banana shrubs! The adrenaline rush, the blissful moment of being occupied with activity so routine and trivial for some, yet so special and memorable for our family.

Turknoys Exploring Philippines — Carabao Ride in Indang! Home Sweet Home Adventures!

That exact same feeling, although a bit challenging to replicate in our day-to-day life as expat family in the desert, we always try our best to feel alive, to be exhausted with happiness and not boredom. We find bliss in sand dunes, so we always seek the thrill of admiring the desert with kids especially at high temperature and humidity! In the desert, we feel busy dreaming, busy feeling the euphoria of experiencing life surrounded by sand and dust yet with so much comfort magnified by love and blessings of the country we live in.

Turknoys Exploring Qatar — Brown is our Green when in Qatar! Exploring is always blissful

Every day we open our eyes are God’s gift. Each day we don’t do things that make us come alive is an injustice to this gift.

Every day is too precious not to be busy living. Such a waste to be busy dying!

Family Goals — Let’s Be Busy Growing Everday. It takes full commitment to growth!

Life’s An Opinion

June 9, 2016July 27, 2016 by turknoys, posted in Travel Goals, Why Travel With Kids?

“My life is your opinion, Mommy!” – said with conviction by our eldest Turknoy

One of the side benefits of traveling with kids is when there are idle time in between transportation schedules like waiting for the next plane schedule to the next city. During these times, open discussions with kids, whether parents are comfortable or not, is unavoidable.

We were talking about diverse topics such as religion, home education and how people influence one another knowingly or subconsciously. Out of nowhere, she said it.

“My life is your opinion, Mommy!”

Turknoys Exploring Belgium — her opinions are deeprooted to every atoms in her body! 😜 Gheez, Thanks Mommy!

And wow! Never did a statement hit the mark so accurately.
It’s true. In a good, bad, intense and very scary way.
Our kids are living the life based on our opinions. We do not go to church or mosque, we don’t send the kids to school, we make exploring a habit and a lifestyle.

These are our opinions and we live by these. Not a popular choice by majority, non-conventional. Scary choices yet we stand by these opinions.

Just to be so clear – we are not claiming we are right. Nor we want anybody’s approval either.

The Turknoy parents young age was so patterned with anyone else’s and we formed high opinions about it. We used to religiously go to church or mosque. We went to traditional schools and universities. We used to dream about high paying job with normal working hours and “settling down” to a nice cozy home with a garden.

Yes, we have strong opinions about how we used to live our lives. Our Turknoy kids lives are now based on these opinions.
An immense responsibility we are taking on to ourselves and not on to anybody else.
When Turknoy Mum was young, growing up in the village (it takes a village to raise a child, right?!), the teachers and neighbors would praise how smart she is, and how successful she would be being an accountant (uh, yeah, that specific because during those times, being Certified Public Accountant is synonymous to being successful.) Study hard, graduate from university and get a high paying job.

There are beautiful girls in the same village who were expected to be marry a rich man because they are “very beautiful.” Some of these beautiful girls turned into beautiful women waiting in vain for that rich men to come to their lives.

Well, Turknoy Mum is lucky she is smart and not that beautiful. She did finish her university and got a good job.

Opinions affect our lives. More than we allow it to. We are what we imagined but most of the times, we listen so much to what other people think should happen in our lives that it becomes our own imagination.

It is really important to hang out with the right people who will give us a good image of what we are capable of doing, of what future we deserve. Well-meaning people are usually parents, right? See, we are qualified to raise our kids based on our opinions! One of the reason we advocate strongly home education.

The other side of our family is not any different. When Turknoy Dad was growing up in his own village, he was raised to the very same ideals. Study hard, graduate from a university, get a job that would pay for his retirement, get married to a loving wife who will take care of him and kids in a very comfortable and clean (oh boy, do they clean their houses!) home.

Luckily, his inclinations to see the world prevailed and he didn’t marry a wife who will take care of his house. He did however, married a wife who can make him rich (not financially) beyond his dreams.

Yes, luckily, we were able to form opinions of our own so we can live out of our parents, our neighbors and society’s opinions.

We can still hear our eldest saying with conviction, “My life is your opinion, Mommy!

This we reply:

“Well, thank you, kids for living your life based on our opinions. For now. We sincerely hope that we are enabling you to make your own opinions and have the courage to live by these.”

Life is too short to live by somebody else’s opinions.

We are all winging how to live our lives. Nobody knows for sure, what is right. And what was right then, could be so wrong now.

Our lives, our opinions.

Your life, your opinion.

High respect and high five for that!

Turknoys Exploring Greece! — and she says: My life is my Mother’s opinion! Well, hope Mommy’s opinion is not as ancient as Parthenon!

Set Goals. It’s Necessary!

June 8, 2016July 27, 2016 by turknoys, posted in Travel Goals

I fly because it releases my mind from the tyranny of petty things … – Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Do you set goals for your family? As in serious goals written somewhere and not just a hashtag #familygoals or #travelgoals ? Can you state your goals in a sentence or two?

In any business organization, profit or non-profit, the importance of setting the vision and goals are very important. Companies spend thousands of dollars making sure that their vision, mission, goals and objectives are updated and relevant. Turknoy Mum knows this, she spent more than a decade of her career in ensuring an effective system is in place to set the direction of the organization.

A person without goal is a like a kite without string, going to wherever the winds blows, until the kite gets destroyed in God-knows how, where and when.

As much as our family believes in destiny and meant-to-be-happy-ever-after, we believe in setting goals. It keeps the hearts and minds waking up with tons of excitement, not to mention, keeps the hearts and minds focused on what we really want to get out of this life.

The day-to-day living together becomes an agony if we keep doing the same thing over and over only guided with society’ directions one of which is that is that ” Someday, kids will finish school and “become successful.”

Successful means achieving goals, can’t really be a success without goals to rate it against, right?

Growing up, both Turknoy parents wanted to be rich. We earned our first thousand dollars successfully before we turned 30, got married, had kids, and kept our management jobs…. And then……… day in, day out.. wait for kids to grow up, keep the day jobs, wait for kids to grow up… And then…. Boredom. In other lives, it could mean drama here and there. How people without goals would welcome drama in their lives if there is nothing to look forward to! Oh, that happens!

Human psychology supports this. When the mind is not looking forward to something, it deviates from what is right or appropriate. Fights, affairs, murder, suicide. Okay, a bit exaggerated to get our point across, but that’s how it happens in real life.

Settling down with family is not an end point. It is a status. Same as being in a relationship. Or staying “forever” with your one true love.
The sad and pathetic thing is when we consider “settling down with our family” and living our forever with the one we love” our one exclusive goal in life. There is really more to life.
Romantic as it sounds, it really is boring. Setting goals is an ongoing process. There is an end point to goals to determine whether we achieved it or not, but the process needs to be habitual aka “forever.”
Our family’s goal is to travel. It is our family’s passion. It gives us adrenaline to deal with our day-to-day expat realities of petty and trivial things. It refreshes our mind seeing new things, giving happy sensations whenever we experience new places and meet new people.
Traveling is not the only goal for a family. However, the importance of setting goals should not be underestimated.
Family and setting goals is like life and oxygen.
So, do you have goals for your family? Let us know, in one sentence or two?

Kids Can Fly Better

June 7, 2016July 27, 2016 by turknoys, posted in Travel Goals, Why Travel With Kids?

Understanding the principles of aerodynamics has nothing to do with the experience of flying. – Northrop Frye

Our Turknoy youngest was almost one-year old when we started flying together as family. We can all vividly and fondly remember the trouble of flying with stroller, baby bags with milk and bottles, changing nappies in the crampy airplane toilet and most loved of all, the crying and loud baby in the mid-flight when all passengers sleeping! Oh gracious!

We can hear what some of our fellow travelers and even family members think when we started traveling three years ago. It goes like – “These parents are insane, why do they subject these kids and their fellow travelers the agonies of carrying the kids to places to explore (traveling!). The kids won’t even remember these places they painstakingly took them to. Such trouble.”

Traveling with our little ones is one milestone we will definitely not regret or forget!

Oh, when we look at our now four-year old now! How at home she is at airplane and how she is very insistent to watch the safety flight video and stay at the window seat to look down below when the plane lands or takes off. The extreme joy of watching the clouds when we are 36,000-ft. like all the life’s secret will be revealed to her alone is just too priceless to watch. During long flights, she sleeps like a grownup scrunched in the seat with a smile on her face. Most of time.

Our six-year old son never fails to shriek with so much delight during landing and takeoff. Such loud moments when we take off… “And off we go….. “ he always shout and claps loud whenever we land.

On the other hand, the parents are scared-shit of all the things that could go wrong when we land or take off. Adults know that the most dangerous part of flying are the landing and takeoff. There we are sitting so uptight while our kids are having the momentous joys of their life!

Kids enjoy flights better than adults. They say ignorance is bliss, but we don’t think it’s the ignorance. It’s the enthusiasm to experience and explore something for all the senses, not mainly for the brain and intellect.

That carefree feeling, the abandonment of what should be but what is. Not the moments what kids can remember.

Exploring new places, experiencing new adventures – those are not for the intellect. It is definitely way much more than that. It’s the foundation of our being, the things we will build our future memories on.

Foundations are built to last, built to be strong.

Foundations can also be built while having fun and being happy.

Kids should learn to explore freely. Kids can fly and travel better.

Turknoy Travels 100 is a Lifestyle

May 4, 2016August 21, 2016 by turknoys, posted in Travel Goals

Jumping out of the bed with excitement every day? That is a great way to wake up every morning. Important question then is.. What could make us jump out of bed with excitement?

The answers won’t be that simple. That really varies for every individual.

For our family, mostly, it’s knowing that we had activities together all planned out for the day. It is not particularly important, where and what those activities are. As long as we are all together as a unit, as family. That is one great blessing we will always be grateful for.

The kids are growing way too fast for comfort and the parents are not growing any younger. To perform several activities require a lot of planning. Otherwise, everything will become monotonous and spending time together will eventually become Boring (with the capital B). The spark of our family wanting to be with each other all the time is too precious to not enjoy that as long as we can.

Hence, the travel goals.

We strongly believe that setting goals make things happen. Of course, goals need to me SMART. Both in business setting and in real life, no matter how personal it gets.

Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Time-bound.

The huge difference of setting goals in business setting versus personal life is the end game – what do we want to get out of these goals, the ultimate end. Business goals end game is usually compensation, personal goals end game is more often than not, quality of living and personal happiness.

Turknoy Travels 100 is not only focused on travelling together to 100 countries by 2023, before the kids turn 18.

Well, it is really that and more.Travel and education are the two main focus of our family lifestyle.

As we already defined our travel strategy and it is an unpopular one, we intend to mix-and-match this normal-life-with-real-job-travel-when-we-can-with-kids with every day-is-a-travel-adventure lifestyle.

Really awesome and cool family world-school, they travel around the world continually for very long periods of time, supporting themselves and educating their children at the same time. Turknoys may not (honestly, just really can’t) afford that worldschooling lifestyle for now. It gets too tiring for us to travel and explore after more than three weeks.

That’s when we realize, we are more like short time adventurers, sometimes fancy, most of the time cheapo family travelers.

We look forward to living our residence country for month-long holiday and we also look forward to coming back to homebase.

We look forward to visiting our home countries, Turkey and Philippines, but we also look forward to coming back to expat life.

Best of all worlds, we want to believe that.

The heat of 55degC may bother a lot of people during Doha summer time, but we sometimes look forward to less traffic and quiet times in the region. The below zero temperature and enormous snow in the Arctic region may well be a great home but we are very satisfied experiencing the Northern Lights for three consecutive nights, no shoveling required, snow mobile fun for limited period and leave these all for the months of starless nights in the desert.

We appreciate the different culture, but for now, we are particularly fond of our own comfort zone. Someday, sooner or later, things will change; perspectives may blur and other ideals will become clear, but for now the following specific travel goals have been set, consistent with #turknoytravels100

1. To travel 100 countries by 2023 with the following criteria:

All members of the family visited and explored the country at the same time. Home education trips without the five family members won’t be counted, although these adventures will be included in our blog.
Visited two cities of the country. We don’t just visit a country for touristic purposes. We aim to be travelers, not tourists.
Spent more than two days in the country. Although it’s not the number days but the quality of time spent traveling, it does help to stay more than two days in a certain country.To travel 100 countries by 2023 with the following criteria:
100 countries distributed across seven continents, including Antartica. Chronologically, we wish to visit Asia (home sweet home), Europe (partly done), Africa (next!), South America, Antartica, Australia, North America
Home based adventures include Philippines, Turkey and Qatar. Not included in 100 countries.

2. To explore 100 islands in the Philippines.

turkey turknoytravels100 — The photo that started it all. The time when we realized how happy and satisfying family travel is. Our youngest is yet to be conceived in this time and we set goals after she was born. Exploring Pamukkale in one of our home countries #Turkey is very memorable to us as a couple, joined by love, commitment; heart, brain and feet! With a help of a little goal setting, #turknoytravels100 was set three years after – 2013. Yes, taking our sweet time.. It’s okay for us, traveling is something to savor; a lifestyle to enjoy, not just something to tick off the list!

3. To visit 100 attractions in Turkey.

palawan turknoytravels100 — It’s not going to be fair to the Turkish side of the family (mainly #turknoysdad ) if #familytravel will not include the islands of Philippines! The dad loves the gorgeous islands of Philippines. We intend to explore at least 100 islands, an easy goal compared to 7107 islands total, by 2023 as well! Home sweet home adventures is just pure awesome love!

4. To enjoy every moment in Qatar by finding 100 favourite spots as part of home education

qatar turknoytravels100 — he Singing Sand Dunes of Qatar! Our favorite family fun spot in Qatar! Definitely number one spot for us while exploring the country where we currently resides as #expatfamily 🦄😍 We also aim to explore places and areas in this country to appreciate day to day living when we are not visiting our countries! Because exploring is a lifestyle! And great lifestyle is great life!

Like any other SMART goal, these goals need to get SMARTER..

Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Time-bound. Evaluated. Revised.

Life happens. Life will happen. God-willing, we will be able to realise these goals. For whatever circumstances and these will not be realised, we will re-set and revise goals as the need arises.

No worries. Only excitement to wake up and jump out of the bed every beautiful morning!

france turknoytravels100 — At Sacre Coeur Paris, France where we definitely enjoyed the rain, stairs with stroller, church and awesome city views. Priceless moments our youngest would not remember (and even our toddler then!) but the parents definitely would!

Dreaming of France No More!

October 11, 2013August 21, 2016 by turknoys, posted in France, Travel Adventures, Why Travel With Kids?

I believe that everybody dreams of going to Paris, France and seeing the Eiffel Tower.

There are enough movies, soap operas, news, marketing publicities about France being the most romantic country in the world to make everyone wants to go there.

Including me. And to think that I came from a very (very) remote town of an archipelago country. I wanted to see the Eiffel Tower ever since I saw the movie French Kiss. I was almost 17. (I did tell you I am a remote country girl, right?)

To see the Eiffel Tower for me was one of those goals that you have to have in the list but totally okay not to achieve; right there in the group of “to marry my prince charming” list. These goals I thought would never actually happen.

Eventually, I did marry my prince charming and we did live happily ever after. Then it hit me – dreams could come true. Why not go to Paris?

But part of living happily ever after is having kids. We had three. Yes – prince charming can’t keep his hands off his princess.

Later on, my prince charming and I realized, that since we have kids, it would be almost impossible to travel. So they told us.

According to our happily-ever experts, there are a lot of reasons why we can’t travel. Period. Much more travel to France. The most popular one is that kids will not appreciate France and the baby won’t even remember. Bottom line, almost everyone around us thinks that it is not just worth it.

That same reason why we can’t travel to France just yet, fueled my desire to go to France more . We went to France March 2013. This is my happy-ever-after. This is not my kids’ dream. This is MY DREAM. I want to explore France. I want to travel with my family. I don’t want to wait until they are “older” to appreciate the place same as I would. I definitely don’t want to wait until we are retired and kids are all grown up.

My happy-ever -after is now.

For seven beautiful days we explored Paris, France. On top of that, we stayed in Disneyland, Paris for three awesome nights. We explored further and went to South of France: Nice and Provence France for additional week.

I am dreaming of France no more! I am happy; ready to move on to other dreams.

If the kids want to come back later on, it will be their dream to be conquered. I have achieved my life-long dream, they should follow their mother’s lead.

Have you been to France? Do you want to visit the country sometime? What’s keeping you?

We Love This Part of the World in the Summer!

July 13, 2013August 21, 2016 by turknoys, posted in United Arab Emirates

We have our reasons. When all expats from the Middle East are planning their escape from the desert heat, our family is rolling out our home activities and travel around GCC! We simply love this part of the world in the summer.

Yes, the summer at more than fifty degrees Celsius! What could be more exciting? Or boring depends on what perspective you are coming from. Imagine a day raising a gifted 7-year old, a rambunctious almost 4-year old and an equally active 1-year old and having the only the option of either indoor activities or heat stress. Life is simply glorious.

Last year, we finally kicked off our travel and off we went to Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Might as well explore the neighboring countries. The summer discount is huge. Normally, we couldn’t afford our stay in The Palm Atlantis – in the summer, we can! We stayed in the fabulous hotel for three days and two nights and we were ecstatic!

There are loads to do in the Palm that we planned to just explore the place. We were very fortunate to have a friend in the area who were very willing to guide us around Dubai. Highlight of the tour outside Atlantis are exploring the tallest building in the world – The Burj Khalifa, and skiing in the desert during summer – how cool is that? It was way TOO cool for us! It really does help to know someone in the area, reuniting with an old friend and free local guide! Perfect!

On top of the world – Burj Khalifa

The parents had a blast and the kids loved every minute of the trip. This trip actually inspired us to explore more! We intend to go back to United Arab Emirates to visit other cities. There is way too much to see.