I think it’s fair to say that the expression “I’m writing from a rooftop terrace in the old part of Istanbul” has a certain romantic appeal to it.

And this is where I am, having travelled on a short red eye flight from Copenhagen last night, to arrive with my family in a lovely hotel in the centre of Istanbul’s most ancient downtown, in the shadow of the Hagia Sophia and the Blue Mosque, and with the Golden Horn and the Sea of Marmara in front of me. It’s a quiet Sunday morning, and the family are all sleeping. We’ve started our two week holiday here together with a nap, a little breakfast and a cursory flip through some guidebook and wikipedia pages.

We’re on a one month European voyage. Our first leg was in Jutland in Denmark, spending six days with our dear friends Monica Nissen and Toke Moeller at their place in the lake district of central Jutland. On Friday Toke and I headed out to the west coast of Denmark, to a remote old hunting lodge near Tarm to work a little with key voices from The Natural Step International and the MSLS program in Karlskrona. It was good work and always fun jamming with Toke and good friends. Cool to see a countryside that reminds me so much of southern Ontario – rolling hills, woods and streams, farm fields and windmills. The whole landscape was changed by Danish farmers (and convict labour) starting at the end of the 19th century. It was previously heath lands and peat bogs, but in a remarkable national project following a war with Germany in the 1860s the whole countryside was repurposed for agrarian purposes and planted with beech and evergreen forest. Now it is mostly fields of corn and wheat and sugar beats and potatoes, with small patches of heath preserved where we gathered chanterelles and other forest delicacies.

Last night we left the open sandwich breakfasts and delightfully robust cheeses of Denmark for the sour yoghurt, strong coffee fresh fruit and olives of Turkey. We’re ensconced here in the big city for a few days and then heading to Capadoccia and the south coast for sightseeing, visiting sacred sites and chilling on the ocean. Our trip will end at a learning village event in Slovenia hosted by the Art of Hosting worldwide community. There may be a little harvest along the way, touch ins and reflections. But mostly I’m taking it easy, reading rather than writing, sitting rather than walking, sleeping rather than eating.

Feels good.

It sometimes boggles my mind, how easy it actually is to cross an entire continent.

Yesterday I woke up at 6am in the Beaver Valley, on the shores of Georgian Bay in Ontario where a beautiful crisp spring day greeted me.  I set off to Toronto, now knowing what condistions the roasd were in on the high country between Lake Huron and Lake Ontario.  In between thos Great Lakes is the Niagara Escarpment and the oak Ridges Moraine, two incredible heights of land that received a lat winter beating this week from a cold front that scoured the whole area.

All was well with me though, on a good drive along Highway 26 which hugs to Bay from Thornbury to Collingwood and on to Wasaga Beach and Stayner.  From there the road turns south becoming Airport Road and takes a bee line across the rolling countryside, up and down the esacarpment, and over the 700 foot high folds of glacial till that are now covered with farmland, pine forest and maple woods.  For two hours, the bright sun, spring bird song and beautiful southern Onatrio countryside fill my senses.

Once through Caledon, the country changes radically.  The land flattens out and all around are the sprawling McMansion suburbs that litter the edge of Toronto.  Along Airport Road, whole sections of farmland have been converted to a monoculture of boring, treeless housing.  Nothing is human scale.  A small sidewalk is hardly ever used and the four lanes of road feeds commuters to the city and large transport trucks to the distribution centres, warehouses and factories of Malton and the other northwestern suburbs.  A large Sikh community lives near the airport, and so the few commercial plazas in the area are devoted to saris, curries and Bollywood video rentals.  Here and there, old Victorian famhouses stand surrounded by all of this development, a last echo of the previous wave of immigrants that lived there.

I dropped my rental car, boarded a plane for Vancouver and instantly fell asleep.  I woke up over Kelowna just in time for our descent into Vancouver.  The coast was grey and cold and pouring rain.  Grabbed my bag, jumped on teh Canada Line, stopped long enough at Granville and Georgia Streets for a La Brasserie Chicken Sandwich and then caught the Express bus to Horseshoe Bay.  The 330pm ferry delivered me back to Bowen Island.

It is odd standing on the deck of a ferry crossing a small channel in the Pacific Ocean having woken up a mere 12 hours earlier some 4300 kms away.  This is a journey that until the last century would have taken years of my life.  Instead, I walk off the ferry, shaking a little of the remaining Ontario rain from my suitcase, home before my kids arrive back from school.

Magic.