IN THE BEGINNING: choosing the destination

This is the hard part - so many places and so little time. My younger brother generously gave me frequent flyer miles as a graduation gift from law school, and I agonized for weeks, even months, over where to go. I've been to most of western Europe, and wanted to go someplace exotic that I hadn't been before. I narrowed it down to Egypt, New Zealand, Eastern Europe and Turkey.

Safety concerns were an issue as I would be traveling solo, so I reluctantly dropped Egypt from my list. I thought about New Zealand, but since I only had two weeks for traveling, I didn't want to spend two days getting there and back. That left Eastern Europe and Turkey, and in the end, I decided on Turkey. For one thing, if I picked Eastern Europe I had to make more decisions and pick the countries I wanted to visit. And the more I looked at websites and books on Turkey, the more excited I got about visiting the place.

So Turkey it is...