Istanbul, January 28, 2022---One Needs A sense of Humor To Travel These days.

 Hello All;  Today, a few lines of recent events in my travel here. At Ottawa, when I first checked in my  Boarding Pass had me at the back of the plane; (I never pay for an assigned seat...usually 25 dollars per flight.) Later at the boarding gate, I was issued a new Boarding Pass, very near the front. The lady ahead of me was very large, but the Agent stated to me, "we are moving you to the front of the aircraft as we need more weight up front. In fact, I was moved to Business Class, and she did not want others to know. At Montreal, five minutes before the first Boarding call, they announced that everyone needed to fill out two forms, one to be handed to a flight attendant as we neared Paris, the other to French Customs officers. One was in French on both sides, the one for France was English, declaring you had no virus, and had not been near anyone with the virus. Air Canada collected the forms as they had said, but the French Customs did not know what we were talking about and would not take the forms.....I still have mine.

Here in Istanbul, I found out that there at least two large Lost and Found Companies at the airport...no wonder it took several days for them to find my luggage that they took.                  

When I went back to the airport the morning after my arrival, the taxi drove at about 40 all the way....45 minutes, and on his cell phone all the way talking to different people. On my way back to the hotel, in the sloppy and at times icy conditions, the driver stood at 137 KPM....even police cars passed us, and when I asked what the rules were, this driver told me that only people with no license drive under 100.

Some Turkish words for the traveler;  Bay=men, Bayan-women...for washrooms/kahve...coffee/Taksi is taxi/ Polis...police....thats all for this , and maybe the last of my Turkish lessons.

Tomorrow, we will go looking at several condos for my friends sister from London. After our last work, she came here and did all the paper work, and made the down payment...then was advised that the place she had bought was so tied up in legal matters with the previous owner that it would be a long time before the matter was settled. The Real Estate company returned all funds to her.

That's it for today. 

  

 the speed is posted at 90.