There comes a time when everyone’s travel blog falls embar­rass­ingly behind. I’m afraid Laughingabroad.com is almost three months (maybe more?) behind. It’s not all bad, though, because there is some good news for our Cana­dian read­ers who, I under­stand, are knee high deep in snow already. Today we will be talk­ing about our visit to the beach(es).

In a coun­try where peo­ple say it is becom­ing more Mus­lim by the day, the last thing that comes to mind is lib­eral beaches.  But, Turkey’s beaches are famous for tiny biki­nis, drink­ing, and, well, for being very European.

So this post cov­ers about two weeks of time spent trav­el­ing in west­ern Turkey, or as peo­ple say the Euro­pean part of Turkey because of the lib­eral atti­tudes, 20th cen­tury archi­tec­ture, and hoards of tourists. We were there dur­ing the end of August and begin­ning of September.

The itin­er­ary through Turkey:

Turkey Itin­er­ary: Istan­bul (8 days) -> Pam­mukale (3 days) -> Olu­d­eniz (4 days) -> Olym­pos (6 days) -> Antalya (3 nights) -> Konya (3 days) -> Goreme (7 days) -> Amasya (3 days) -> Tra­b­zon (6 days) -> Erzu­rum (2 days) -> Kars (2 days) -> Van (4 days) -> Dogubayazit (1day)