I grew up surrounded by greenery and open space. Our backyard featured a pool, a tiny vegetable garden and about a million flowers and bordered a wildlife reserve. A few blocks south, there is a tree-lined park with a playground, soccer fields, a...
Istanbul is an easy city to photograph: straddling the East and the West, it's delightfully exotic while remaining somewhat familiar and accessible. It's a colorful city: the blues and golds of mosques and minarets dotting the skyline, the primary...
Although most of my time in Istanbul was spent just enjoying the city--riding the ferries, eating as much baklava as humanly possible, wandering around new neighborhoods in the sunshine--my very first stop was Topkapi Palace. Mostly, it was because...
The only thing I wanted to do on my birthday this year: soak up some sunshine and go for a swim. To be fair, that's pretty much what I want to do on my birthday EVERY year. Even though we were in the gorgeous cosmopolitan city of Istanbul, I...
It's rare that I buy the ticket and board the plane and essentially go to a very faraway place exclusively for ONE activity. But when it came to Turkey, more and more people kept telling me that I couldn't miss a hot air balloon ride in Cappadocia....
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About Me
Christine Amorose Merrill
C'est Christine is my little slice of the internet to talk travel, lifestyle and twenty- and thirty-something struggles. After stints living in France, Australia and NYC and lots of (often solo!) travel around the world, I currently live in San Diego with my husband, daughter and two pugs.