I was going through my photos the other night and realized something very bad. I have not written about a lot of my jaunts over the past couple of years.
I may mention them on the Facebook page or share an occasional pic here or there, but wow have I neglected to write about so many of the places we’ve been.
Why? Who knows. I get lazy, distracted, forgetful. There’s a lot of reasons for it.
In some cases I need time to process where we’ve been and what we’ve seen before I can express how I felt when we were there. Like Istanbul. That place stole my heart. In fact, it was looking back at pics from that trip that started all this.
I wanted to make sure my feelings were real. Have you ever met someone and been smitten with them at first glance, but as you get to know them better the feelings fade?
I’ve had trips like that. I thought it was so wonderful, but then when I look back….eh. It wasn’t as much fun as I thought. I just needed a vacation.
Then there are the places that surprise me. I didn’t want to go to Istanbul. I only went because my husband was craving going somewhere more exotic and different than we’d ever been. In fact, I was freaking out about going.
Then we got there and I really tripped out. Thanks in part to jetlag and a cold I was battling.
But then I fell in love with that country and its people and its history and culture.
Or did I? Would the enchantment fade when I returned stateside?
Nope. Even though we were only there eight days, I feel homesick when I see images from there. Which thanks to the most recent season of the Amazing Race, which spent a leg in Istanbul, and movies like Taken 2 and Skyfall, which were set partly in Istanbul, I’ve thought back very fondly to those eight magical days and am longing to plan a return trip.
That’s what’s come of a lot of my trips. I need time to savor, digest, and figure out how I want to present my experiences there.
So, over the next few months, I will do my best to add photo albums to the Facebook page of some of the places we’ve been, and I hope to finally write about the following:
- Quebec City and the ghosts we learned about on the ghost tour we took there
- The Fortress of Louisburg
- The Angel on the Field of Abraham
- The harem of the Topkapi Palace and possible ghosts inside
- Ephesus and the reaction I had there
- Mary’s house (as in Mary, the alleged mother of Jesus Christ)
- Rippavilla Plantation
- Travellers Rest Plantation
- Hopkinsville and how it hops with paranormal connections
- The Maiden’s Tower
- The Beylerbeyi Palace
- San Francisco and all the haunts we saw there (including Alcatraz)
- Jaunts we’ve taken to see places that authors of all manor were connected with (like Prince Edward Island, the Pera Palace, and even New Orleans).
Those are the ones that pop to mind first. There might be more as I continue to go through photos. And there might be more than one post per place.
Mostly I just want to use this post as a reference for myself that I have unfinished business and destinations I really do want to write about. Here’s some photos from some of the above referenced places that I intend to write about for the remainder of 2012 and into 2013.
Courtney Mroch is a globe-trotting restless spirit who’s both possessed by wanderlust and the spirit of adventure, and obsessed with true crime, horror, the paranormal, and weird days. Perhaps it has something to do with her genes? She is related to occult royalty, after all. Marie Laveau, the famous Voodoo practitioner of New Orleans, is one of her ancestors. (Yes, really! As explained here.) That could also explain her infatuation with skeletons.
Speaking of mystical, to learn how Courtney channeled her battle with cancer to conjure up this site, check out HJ’s Origin Story.