Internet travel plans

So I wasted almost an entire day on the internet today. I did manage to do some exercise, get to the store and write some stuff in Turkish, but definitely the majority of the day was spent searching online for the purpose of making travel plans. I had to find some hotel options for my parents who are heading here in September (I'm happy about that!). That was quite easy though thankfully, plenty of sites that have photos, service details and prices listed.

The other travel plans however were not nearly so neat. I need to head out of Turkey to renew my visa soon as the one I currently have expires on July 20th. The trouble is that I'm going to be helping out at a camp near Mersin at that time so I'll have to go earlier and since the camp is in the southeast of Turkey it rules out the most logical options of Bulgaria or Greece (just a bus-ride away). My traveling companion and I decided that the easiest and quickest would be to fly to Northern Cyprus from Istanbul and then take a ferry from there to Mersin and from there travel straight to the camp. Pretty straight forward right?

Well, one airline quoted this amazing price but when I called it was more than double with the taxes. I tried some other sites, but some didn't go to Cyprus, some just didn't work once you entered all the info and clicked 'ara' (means-'search' or 'find'). Then I realized that once we flew to Northern Cyprus we'd first have to get from the airport to the nearest town of Ercan, then from Ercan travel to one of the seaside towns. That's alright, we'll figure that out once we get there, ask around, there's bound to be a bus or whatever.

But to which seaside town? The one with ferries that go to Turkey of course. Well it took forever to find the right site that listed locations, times and prices for ferries from the town of Girne. Great, but these ferries apparently only go to Taşucu which seems to be 90km from Mersin, or Anumur which is even farther.

Then I learned that there are ferries that go to Mersin (where we want to go) from the town of Gazimağusa but they apparently only run 3 days a week, usually at 8pm, the boat ride takes min. 2 hr and camp starts in the evening. Not so helpful.

So Girne it is. I then tried finding cheap pensions, once again, took forever to find anything but the massive, expensive hotels and holiday complexes listed on the internet. Once I finally did find a list, no prices were mentioned, and I did not have the energy to start phoning every single one on the list of 30 or so to get an idea of prices and room availability.

It is official, I do not enjoy making travel plans...especially on the internet. Isn't this why we have travel agents?

Just for fun, some shots of where I'll be heading in about a week. No, not mine, from the good ol' internet.