Salt Lake City

I love traveling in the early morning before dawn. It is cool and dark and almost no traffic. The world is muted. I feel alone and cozy. A perfect morning in Salt Lake after a huge wind/dust storm the previous evening followed by a cleansing rain. Loved it. I have to be honest. I’m not fond of Las Vegas. I actually like weather. If I ever come back to the states for any length of time I will really have to give Utah and Salt Lake a lot of consideration.

The lounge for Delta in their new terminal in SLC is awesome. As is common with the idiot American carriers, simply having a First Class ticket isn’t enough to access the lounge, however the lady helped me out and I found that my Platinum American Express in combination with the ticket allows access. Very nice. I have found that the benefits of that card pay for the annual fee, both tangibly (like refunding the cost of the Global Entry application) and intangibly (like access to lounges when traveling).

The lounge has the BEST little workstations I’ve ever seen. I’d almost say they are worth considering for one’s own home. Really comfortable to work in.

I saw an old acquaintance last night, a mutual friend of mine and the people I was staying with in Salt Lake. How absolutely lovely to see her and to be able to talk with friends again. Loner that I am I have still really missed that. And it was nice seeing my son, daughter-in-law, and grandchildren. I’m still not much of a family guy – I’m sure the grandchildren kind of look at me like ‘who is THIS guy?’ but I’m glad I’ve seen them. I really have to make a point to come back at least once a year to see them.

Next week is it. I’ll try to post this while I’m in the lounge in SFO before getting on my Qatar flight.

Las Vegas - SFO - 11th May

Short flight. The domestic side was quite packed. The International terminal in San Francisco … not so much, as you can see.

Istanbul

The days flew past and I’m in Doha now. The flight was excellent. Wrangling 3 heavy bags was not as onerous as I thought it would be although I certainly tweaked my back slightly early in the process. The international terminals were fairly empty although anecdotally I was told it was a very slow day. The flight in a Qatar Q-Suite was really nice especially with only 6 people in Business Class. I slept about 2/3 of the way. I was tired. Did not sleep that well the night before. Worried about my friend in the hospital and the seemingly endless minutiae of leaving.

In Istanbul this morning (Thursday 13th May). As you will have seen from my previous post, my friend died while I was en route. As I was looking out at the Bosphorus in the pre-dawn darkness I was reminded that if it wasn’t for Mark, I probably wouldn’t be here. He was the one that pushed me to come here and renew my connection with this country. And I’m glad I did.

The city is in lock down but I’m so tired I don’t really notice. Driving from the airport was nice with no traffic. Reminds me of the early 90s when I returned to Istanbul from a business trip to Switzerland on the Sunday of a designated census. Everybody had been ordered to stay home to be counted. It was like that. A city of 15+ million – deserted streets. Eerie but enjoyable. The skyline, especially on the Asian side has changed so much. Istanbul is a city that spans two continents. Europe and Asia. They refer to the Asian side here as the Anatolian side. This is where they hold the Inter-continental marathon. There used to be just one bridge across the Bosphorus, now there are three.

Istanbul is a huge city as you can see from the picture. There is the old city, the European side, and the Asian side. Both sides are sprawling outwards to a huge degree.

I had forgotten that female service staff here are somewhat rare. All the waiters I’ve seen so far are males. But this hotel (Gezi Bosphorus) is very nice. Great bed. Like a brick. 😊. As an aside, I did vacate the house I shared with Mark and Liza during the illness to give room to stay for visitors and family. Unfortunately, most people preferred to sleep on the couch rather than my bed because it was so hard. [Addendum - my bed is being universally castigated by anyone who has tried it :-) ]

My teeth are hurting again. From the 3 crowns + root canal thing back in January. Ah well. Guess we’ll see how good the Turkish dentists are. 😊

My Turkish seems to be … basic but OK. No doubt that being here is on the ground is good for refreshing it. I’m happy to be here there is no doubt. It feels right to me. I didn’t realize how out of place I feel in the states.

Turns out one of my molars has a cracked root. WTF?! How did that happen? It was funny communicating about this in Turkish with the dentist. Pantomime was involved. The visit with X-Rays was 100₺ (Turkish Lira) … about $12. And I got anti-biotics and pain killers. So better now. But I need to find a slightly higher end dentist to do the actual work.

I walked around a little yesterday. The lockdown does not apply to foreigners apparently although keeping your passport on hand is a good idea. The local neighborhoods seem operational. People out and walking around conducting business. All masked up. Just not much vehicular traffic.

OK … Final push to publish. 72 hours since I landed and feel a little energy this morning. And it is cool, gray, and rainy outside!!! 😊 Out-Freaking-Standing! 😊. I have missed that so much.

I will publish here as a part one. I’m moving into my AirBnB tomorrow so we’ll see how that goes. I’m going to go walk around the address today to see what it looks like.