Hello From Canada. I arrived home on Monday morning at ten after a two hour train trip from Montreal.
My time in Turkiye was one of the best vacations that I have had. The people were great, and very welcoming. An example of this occurred on Tuesday evening January 10. I had gone into a restaurant for a light dinner , intending to have my favorite soup, Lentil. The waitress delivered the soup, and she was followed by another waiter with a full steak dinner. I told him that it was not my order, must be for someone else. The waiter pointed to a nearby table where three young men were sitting and laughing. I spoke to them and they replied in perfect English.....stating..."Welcome to Turkiye". I found out that they had never been out of the country, but were doing what is a custom to people who are not natives to the land.
The time since my last posting continued with exploring the city and sitting in a coffee shop beside the Bosphorus and watching the ships travel between The Black Sea and the Mediterranean. My friends met me at my hotel for breakfast on Sunday morning, then I took a taxi at noon to start my trip home. What a ride that was. It is usually about a 40 minute ride at off peak traffic times. My trip was 20 minutes. We travelled at 140 and up all the way, the driver on his cell phone most of the time. We passes police cars several times....no problem.
The flight from Istanbul to Montreal would take 10 hours and 11 minutes, so the captain said, as we taxied out to takeoff. Two hours into the flight, there was a medical emergency when a young man passed out after calling for help from crew. He was put on oxygen and monitored then taken to the front where he could lie down. He returned to his seat several hours before we landed. Because of the possible need to land, we diverted from a track that would have been over London and direct to Montreal. Instead, we went up over Oslo Norway, over to Iceland and across to Greenland and into Canada. We were over places with hospitals if needed. We landed ten hours and 12 minutes after departure. Since I had been able to sleep on the flight, I sat up at the airport and returned to Ottawa on the first morning VIA train here.
I will post some observations about Turkiye in about a weeks time. Take care.
