Exploring Izmir Turkey

So for the last two months, we have been doing this epic road trip all around Turkey. We've driven about 4,500 kilometers, circling around, going as far east as Mardin, making it all the way down to Antakya, driving along the coast and back up to Izmir where we started. And one of the things that surprises me the most about our trip in Turkey is that every single city and region in Turkey has very different and diverse food and unique foods to that area. So as we've been going around Turkey, trying out the food in each city, everyone keeps telling us to come to Izmir. So today, we finally get to go and try out all the great food in Izmir. Are you ready to eat some good food? Yeah. Okay, what is this? What do we have? This is Boyoz. I don't know how to pronounce it. B-O-Y-O-Z. Okay. You don't know what it's made out of? It's the thing they get. I don't know. So straight away, I might have done the least amount of research for this food tour as possible because I just put out a call on Instagram of what should we eat, and then I copied everything that everybody said, and we're going to eat it all. I should do more research on what these things are, but I'll Google it on the way. Is there anything chocolate? All right. There is something chocolate. So we're going to eat it, and then you'll tell me what it is? Basically. I don't like this game. It's a pastry. I don't taste anything inside. It just tastes like a croissant. So after a quick Google search, Boyoz, I think is how it's pronounced, is particularly famous in Izmir. It's borrowed from Jewish heritage, but it seems to be the only place where it's kind of commercially available via the original recipe, and apparently, traditionally, it's eaten for breakfast alongside a hard-boiled egg. It's basically... I mean, there's a variety of different types, but it's kind of a plain, flaky pastry, and it does go really good with... for breakfast. You need a chai to go with it, though. I know. Somebody's impatient. Whoa. Chocolate? That is good. You have a little something on your face there. Chloe, how was the pastry? Good. It's a little windy today. What's this? I don't even know what it's called. It was just... It had chocolate in it, so I bought it. Chocolate. Something with chocolate. You know, I'm here for it. Okay. Mmm. I'm gonna eat it. Is it Nutella or just chocolate? It's like warm chocolate. It's chocolate. It tastes, like, really good. I don't know if I'm gonna share that. Someone give me one hug. It's very cold. A bit of a windy, chilly day today. The weather's crazy. It's cold. But it's our last day, so we're trying to make the most of it. We've got a long list of food to eat. I'm gonna go get mine. What is that? Izmir Bomba. Oh. So, this is apparently a cookie filled with Nutella. Cookie. What else? Is that it? Yep. I mean, is that it? It's famous here in Izmir. This looks amazing. I'm gonna try it. Okay. Oh. Oh my goodness. That's the bomba. That's the bomba part. Oh. It's supposed to be, like, an explosion of Nutella. It looks like it. Oh my goodness, it looks delicious. Good thing they gave us some wipes. These are gonna be necessary, I think. Not a good way to start the day. So when I put out that Instagram request for what should we eat in Izmir, I must have gotten 50 plus responses for Izmir Bomba. It seems to be the most iconic pastry treat dessert here in Izmir, and I'm excited to try it. I like the Nutella. I like it. It's basically, like, it looks like plain dough wrapped in a giant Nutella cookie, and it basically kind of explodes in your mouth of Nutella. That's a lot of Nutella. Chloe, look at Daddy. Your face. Your face? We're gonna need some serious teeth brushing after this. Don't get it in your hair. Oh my goodness. It does feel like a bomb. That's, like, the perfect name for it. Nutella bomb. That's good. I'm apparently not experienced enough to handle this. Oh my goodness. It exploded all over you. It really did. It should be called a Nutella bomb. It's good, though. Chloe, don't make a mess, okay? It's really windy, so I don't know if you can hear me, but just walking on this street, this is kind of my first impression of Izmir. We just got in yesterday and haven't done any exploring, and this is really cool. I think this is a really cool city, and I'm really enjoying... It's very modern. Yeah, it's really modern, and I'm really enjoying kind of a different feel here in Izmir. There's definitely a lot of coffee shops, that's for sure. Yeah, which we've kind of missed. Are you going to eat oysters with me? No. Just one? No. I don't know how to eat this. Let me just say first, I do not like seafood, so Brady, this is all you. I can't believe Alaska likes seafood, too. Are you going to try it? Honestly, I have no idea how to eat this or what it tastes like. This is midyat dolma, which I believe is a stuffed mussel. What it's stuffed with, I don't know. I'm assuming you squirt a little bit of this on it. I have no idea. I feel like there's a lot of people watching me right now. How is it? Is it good? It is good. Blimey, yet satisfying? No, I think this is... It tastes like it's stuffed with rice. It's really good. Is it good? Is it chewy? No. Is it fishy? Slightly. But not really. I really like it. Good, I'm glad you like it. I don't think that I would like it without the stuffing, but... Yeah, with the rice and everything? Yeah. Good. Do you want to try one? I don't think so. I'm trying to convince Heather to eat it. I'm not going to eat it. Eat it. No. You should. Try it. It's like, it's really hard for me to, like, eat things that you can see that, like, they were just alive, and that's what they looked like, and now I'm supposed to eat them. I just have an issue with it. You know how to. I can't do it. Alright, this next one is kokoroc. I think that's how you pronounce it. And this is an iconic sandwich here in Izmir. It is cooked on a horizontal rotisserie instead of the vertical ones, and this is just what you're supposed to eat in Izmir, so we're going to try it. The bread looks, like, really nice and soft. Somebody ate it, so let's eat it. Somebody ate bread. Oh gosh. You can do it. And then squirt a little lemon on it. I don't know if I can do it. Okay. Just looking at it. And then you scoop it up with the other half. Yup, you scoop it up with the other half. I want to try it, but I don't want to eat it. I'll try not to eat it. I can't do it. It's stuck on the shelf. Why were you so brave to try scorpion, but now you're too afraid to try mussels? Um, I'll just get scorpion. She's asking for another bite. Oh my goodness. Hey, girl! Tastes a little bit like seaweed, but it's good. Would you like another one? No, it creeps me off, but it was tasty. It's really good. What do you think now? What have you done to this place? Alexa did it. Sometimes we have coffee conversations, and then realize we need to share it. So this is something that's been weighing on my mind for a long time. It's bothering me that we haven't been talking about it, and then we just had this conversation, and I said, stop, we have to grab the camera. So we were talking about how, you know, we don't want to be a part of the problem of people having this Instagram reality of looking at other people's lives and thinking they must be so magical, comparing your own life to that. When you look at social media, social media is nothing but a curated highlight reel that is so perfectly edited, and you miss out on everything bad. And the problem is that you have, as a viewer, as a consumer of that, you have this skewed perspective of, oh, their life must be so perfect, and I don't measure up. When I compare myself to them, I don't measure up. I feel that way a lot as I scroll certain platforms and certain people. And she read something. So I was just on Instagram yesterday, and I saw someone post, there's like water and beautiful Instagram kind of picture. And then the caption was like, I regret traveling full time, in quotes, said no one ever. And it made me really upset because the reality is I do regret it sometimes. It's so hard, and it's worth it. But you don't see in that, like, not seeing your family and like, not having a church you can go to every week and not having friends and not having your kids be able to have play dates. And like, it's really hard. It's really hard. And, you know, we love traveling, obviously, we sold everything and left our family and friends so that we could explore as much of the world as possible. And that's our passion. But like, it is so hard. It's hard to share that because it's hard enough for people to understand why we're doing this. The natural reaction is, well, then just go home. Yeah, no, that's not the answer. It's not that simple. We both love what we do so much and are so thankful and grateful that we get to do it. But I guess it's just impossible to know how hard it is unless you're living it. The amount of time it takes to plan things out to how exhausting it is, the travel aspect. Travel can be so magical and so awesome and also so miserable at times. It's not as simple as we'll just go home. No, because we would rather do this than anything else. And life is hard, you know? There is no one doing any job in any circumstance that their life could appear to be perfect. But it's not. Everything comes with its own set of struggles. I know there are people that dream of doing what we're doing. We used to be those people because this is a new thing for us. And the reality is, it is worth it. It's worth it for us to do this. The freedom of it. It's definitely not for everyone. So I think maybe even setting that expectation if someone else is thinking about it. But it is worth it for us. We are happy that we're doing this. And we were just having a conversation with Alexa today. What would you rather do? Would you rather go to this next country that's on our list or would you rather go back to Ohio? And her answer was both. And that's exactly how we feel. We feel conflicted of our heart is half there and half wanting to go home. I just think that it's been on my mind for a while now of I really don't want to contribute to that Instagram, YouTube lie of your life is perfect and you'll never measure up. Because I know how much that affects me and I don't want it to affect anyone else. From how we are curating things. And I wish we could capture and edit what we're doing in a different way. Perhaps to help fix that and show some of the struggles. But it's not fair to our kids. Because they're 5 and 7 and they're going to fight. They're going to complain. We're going to get mad at them. And I admire some YouTubers who kind of show some of that struggle. But I'm not going to expose our kids to that level of scrutiny. Because they're kids. I'm fine. And I don't know if you agree with this. It's one thing for us to show our imperfections. Yes, I'm fine doing that. It's different to do that to your children. But the reality is their imperfections affect us. Because we're all human people that typically spend way too much time together. In teeny little apartments. And it's really hard. And that's something that no matter where you are in the world. No matter what your life looks like. If you are a parent. Parenting is hard. It is so hard. None of this is to say that we aren't grateful. We are tremendously grateful for what we get to do. We're still really new at traveling full time. We're still learning so much. Making a lot of mistakes along the way. And I do just want to say. That our time in Turkey has been fantastic. And we have been so blown away. By the way we have been received. By the people. The beauty of this country. It has been magical. The hard parts have been just normal life stuff. That everyone goes through and deals with. And we've been blessed enough to experience that. In such a beautiful place like Turkey. If you've noticed our energy waning. In the last couple of weeks. It's because we are tired. I think that we push a little too hard. We get really excited. It's so rude that they're honking their horn while I'm trying to talk. We were so excited to show how amazing Turkey is. That we just kept on adding more locations. And shortening the travel time in between it. Like oh we only need two days here. Oh we only need one day here. I was so excited to hopefully show people. And get people to travel to Turkey. That was a big goal of mine. And it's been awesome to see in the comments. That people are now booking tickets to Turkey. After watching our videos. It makes me so pumped. But I think we pursued that goal a little too hard. And we poured a little bit too much of ourselves out. And we need a break. So we do have a little bit of a break. And then we are kicking off just an awesome series after that. That I'm super pumped about. And I hope that you'll stick around and check it out. It's going to be incredible. So tomorrow we are going to pack up. This is actually our last day in Turkey. Our last full day in Turkey. Tomorrow we're going to pack up. And head to our next location. We're going to start our next series. Which we're super excited about.