ALASTAIR + LALEINIA

Another one of my dream destinations was Turkey, specifically Cappadocia. The hot air balloons and funky rock formations, what more could you want?! We flew to Istanbul, another cool place! We spent a few days there, walking around, eating food, and admiring the Turkish rugs (at least I was). One of my favorite parts about going to Turkey was coming across people who were friendly to Emre. His name is Turkish, which means "older brother, loving friend." He sure made a lot of friends! When Emre would share his name, they would always be surprised and say, "why does he have a Turkish name?!" My favorite moment was when we were walking around the Grand Bazar and he caught the attention of a store owner. Emre started talking about his birthday coming up, so the man gave him a bracelet with the all seeing eye, to give him protection throughout his life. It was so sweet! Another favorite moment was when we were in a tram and Emre was chatting this young lady's ea

Not a huge fan of New Year's Eve, mainly because we never really do anything special. However, we did have a bangin party in 1999. I was a kid, but still. NewYears is just mehh. Once we landed, we picked up our rental and debated just driving to our hotel and just sleeping. But we were in Vilnius and we thought, why not, let's go see what Estonians do to celebrate! We drove to the old town and there were many people in the square. The clock was counting down, people had their champagne bottles in hand and sparklers waving. Once the clock struck 12, fireworks lit off and everyone was kissing and toasting to the new year. It was really fun, I loved it! And Emre slept the whole time, in our arms. We spent the next few days driving from one country to the other. We started in Vilnuis, went to Riga, and then Tallin and back. It was a lot of driving, Emre was a bugger, and it was frigid cold. But we had a good time. All the Baltic countries had the magical charm to