As I don't have time to blog at the moment (read why here), feel free to check out our latest writing in print and online. This month in J Mag, Jazeera Airways' in-flight magazine, you can read about walking tours with shepherds, learning to make traditional bread with a village baker, and some of the other rustic activities being offered by Northern Cyprus' first eco-village in our story 'Village People' (online version here). The same issue also features 'Where to Stay: Antalya', my overview of the best hotels in one of Turkey's most agreeable cities. We spent just over two and a half months in Turkey last year writing, including six weeks in Antalya last year renting an apartment in a restored Ottoman house in the old city. The Northern Cyprus story was researched during a trip to Cyprus (we flew to Antalya from Northern Cyprus) to update a few books and write a first edition Cyprus guide for AA Publishing. Online, you can take a look at our piece on Adelaide: Australia's most underrated city, on Viator, which is one of our final posts on a series we wrote while Down Under working on books and stories: see the full series here. The pic? That's the idyllic setting for the walks with the local shepherd that we write about in the Northern Cyprus story. Tempted?

This is the stand of hot nuts for sale down at the old harbour at Antalya that I told you about in my previous post. The woman was there toasting her nuts the first week we arrived when there was still a chill in the air and it was so cold we had the fireplace on downstairs. Now it's spring and the weather has warmed up so much that today felt like summer. She was still there this evening, selling her nuts, and she's added pulses, seeds and sweets to her assortment of offerings. She was alone today and I wondered where the man was who was in the photo I took that night. There was an intimacy there between them that I can't explain. Or perhaps it was just in that moment. Perhaps it just felt good to be close to someone. Someone warm. Because surely hot nuts couldn't be enough? Not when there's a chill in the air.

I can't get enough of the sunsets in Antalya. Early evening, an hour or so before the sun goes down, we wander down to the old harbour, a ten minute walk from the house we're renting. During the day Terry and I are so focused on work, that apart from our coffee and lunch breaks, our bend-and-stretch moments, and our breaks to play with the kittens (when we arrived four weeks ago we were asked to babysit a cat and her four newborn kittens; the offer was too good to refuse), we rarely speak and our eyes barely leave our laptop screens. Once upon a time when I worked a full-time job my staff used to call me a robot. Now I freelance I'm the same. Terry's no different. We could be working in separate offices, for separate companies. It's like this when we're in write-up mode. So we use our walks to catch up on the day's 'events'. We ignore the touts wanting to sell us carpets, postcards and tacky souvenirs. Especially the guy in the fez who is always posing for a picture with sunburnt German tourists. And we ignore the guys inviting us to sit down in their restaurants for dinner (at 6pm!), to have a beer, to take a boat tour. And we especially ignore the guys in silly velvet costumes yelling out "Hello! Ice-cream!". Today we look at each other and laugh. It sounds as if they're saying hello to their ice creams. Do these calls ever get people in? Is it not enough to display the ice-cream and for tourists to see it and think "Mmm... ice-cream... that looks good, I might have an ice cream..." Do we need to be shouted at? The touts in Turkey are bugging us more than ever before. They should know we're 'locals' by now, I think. Terry and I use our walks to brief each other on emails received, work opportunities and offers, commissions underway, progress made in trip planning, and new project ideas. We always seem to have new project ideas. This is part of our problem. We're never satisfied. We always want more. We take on too much. And we chat about the travel news and world news and emails from family and friends. And then we enjoy the sunset. With the locals. Who walk along the concrete breakwater and back again. Who canoodle on the rocks. Play with their kids. Read newspapers. Paint their boats. Fix their fishing nets. Buy hot nuts. Eat hot nuts. Play guitar. Drink beers. They always drink beers. They really seem to like their beer here, especially the local brand Efes. Once the sun is so low that the people are only silhouettes, we snap a few pics and go 'home'. Back to work. And then I'm reminded that no matter how much we're living like locals, we're not locals. If we were locals, we'd still be down at the harbour drinking beers.