—among other things, have kept me occupied these long months working on a book proposal for a travel memoir about the around-the-world trip the TravelJen blog documented. Hopefully you’ll have a book in your hand someday—that is, my book, not just any old book. (I know you already have other books, being the literate sorts [...]

For those of you still reading the TravelJen Blog (anyone? anyone? Bueller? Bueller?), my apologies for the long delay since the last posting. I’ve now been back in NYC as long as I was overseas and have been stressfully busy as all hell. While the trip abroad seemed to last much longer than four months—more [...]

Monika‘s mom is trying to tell a joke about Lech Walesa and Bill Clinton. It’s not going well, because she can’t stop laughing. To contain the giggles, she tries ducking her chin towards her beer, which she has clutched to her sternum. To her left is her sister, whose house in Augustow Monika, her mom, [...]

he Hungarian Anesthesiologist is having trouble focusing. His eyes strain to settle somewhere between my apparently impressive breasts and the Great Beyond. But he’s focused, all right. “I’d like to have sexual relations with you,” he slurs, eyelids bobbing up and down like a drowning man in rapids. I raise my eyebrows. I haven’t been [...]

Hidirellez is an annual Spring holiday celebrated on May 5. In Istanbul, it’s a five-day street festival that rocks Ahirkapi, an area near Sultanahmet, where several of the city’s most famous sites cluster, including Topkapi Palace, Hagia Sophia, the Blue Mosque, the Archaeological Museum (including the Museum of the Ancient Orient), and the Main Bazaar. [...]

Ludingirra’s time is up. And he’s not happy about it. His friends think it’s funny, though. They laugh at him, snorting over their beers. He shakes his shaggy head regretfully and drags deeply on his cigarette. There’s no way around it: Every Turk is a Soldier. It’s my last night in Turkey. I’m drinking Efes [...]

Before I return to Antalya, where I am to catch a flight back to Istanbul, I explore the ruins of Rhodiapolis, a small Lycian city, insignificant except for its most famous native son: Opramoas. He was sort of the George Soros of his day, a rich, philanthropically—and politically—minded Lycian who donated tons of money to [...]

Over the next few days, I drive and drive from site to site, interviewing archaeologists about Tlos and Xanthos and Arykanda and Rhodiapolis, which is so little known that I can’t find a link for it. But it’s so awesome, I’m sure I’ll write about it in the future. There is no radio in the [...]

In Antalya I make a plan to loop around ancient Lycia, heading west through the mountains on the northern border; south to Patara; east along the coast, where mountains and ocean meet; and then up the eastern border back to Antalya. The Lycian culture dates back to at least the 13th century b.c., because ancient [...]

A week later I head south to the Mediterranean to look into recent archaeological discoveries on the Turquoise Coast, so called for the transcendent blue-green hue of the Mediterranean here. I’m hoping to find real people in the archaeology. In the week since I was at the museum, I’ve done some research into Inanma. It [...]