A Fairly Fabulous Day

Porter had a business meeting in Istanbul, so we decided to make a weekend out of it.  This was our first time going this far east and to a country with a very different culture and language than we were used to.  I was a little scared.  My mom was worried and sent me a lot of reading material that warned of what can happen if a traveler was not careful and of course when I read stuff like that I envision myself getting kidnapped, sold into slavery, killed and so forth.  That is just how I am, but at least my sense of self preservation keeps me safe.  The biggest fear I had was using the taxi service there.  I read many complaints from travelers about how taxi drivers had scammed them out of money.  So I had a plan. Upon arriving we immediately bought our Jetons (little tokens for the metro system) and jumped on public transit.  No only is Public Transit cheaper in Istanbul, it's also faster and there is no worry of crazy taxi drivers. ...

Earlier this summer #FlowerBeards, became all the rage.  So I went to our local flower shop and bought a few items, came home and gleefully announced to Porter that he was going to become the proud new owner of a flower beard.  He wasn't sure at first, I think liked it in the end.  Mind you, he couldn't move his mouth at all during any of the assembly or the photo shoot.  I really like this trend, I wish more guys would 1: grow beards (they are sexy!) and 2: decorate them in flowers (because it's fun!). I had so much fun with this that I decided to give Puck a #FlowerFro, since he didn't have a beard.  I went through an entire bag of treats getting him to sit still long enough to put flowers in his hair and snap a few pics. But in actuality, this is what he really thought of my flower shenanigans......

The second part of our day out in Kent was somewhat influenced by our late start to the day due to driving out of London, and the fact that Google Maps had a us lost for a good 45 minutes.  After Dover Castle and the White Cliffs of Dover we were supposed to have lunch at The Cider Works , however due to time we had to abandon this part of the trip.  We ended up driving up the coast to Walmer Castle.  Just a bit of history:  King Henry VIII was having a little conflict with France and Spain due to the fact that he was divorcing/killing wives, creating a new church, ect.  So he built artillery forts/castles along the coast.  The round shape of these structures is better to withstand a cannon ball attack than say the earlier square castles.  This particular castle had been converted to a grand house in 1708.  The gardens were amazing and the house was very fun to tour.  I loved seeing the cannons on the roof as well.  And this castle is ri...