BARCELONA AGAIN-ANDORRA TRIP - MAY 15, 2018 TO MAY 22, 2018

BACK TO BARCELONA

ANDORRA

BARCELONA, AGAIN

May 15, 2018 to May 22, 2018

2018-05-15 SRI LANKA TO MALDIVES TO ISTANBUL TO LONDON TO BARCELONA – PART 1

All that in only 24 hours…

We hug Sajeewa and pat George. We will miss both of them after 22 days, 2801 kilometers (1848 miles), mountains, waterfalls, beaches, lots of temples, mobs of elephants, pounds of rice and curry, an orchard of fresh fruit juice, thousands of years of history, poses of peacocks, gallons of sweat, lots and lots of laughs...and one leopard. We wave goodbye and watch them drive off, friends, and faces permanently replacing the lines that others use to define Sri Lanka on maps.

Plans to return are already hardening on the 2020 calendar.

Lorry and Janis head off thataway for their Sri Lanka-Dubai-New York flight on Emirates. It will take us a lot longer to get to Barcelona, on the other side of the dog leg up to England and the long layover in Gatwick Airport.

Turkish Airlines TK731 lifts off in the dark, carrying rows of barren seats, drops into the Maldives an hour later to relieve those islands of this week's determined vacationers. They stream on, tropic roasted medium rare to well done, bleached white now pre-melanomic pale pink to International Distress Orange. Their paradise is not ours, but I recognize the puzzled look: why does this have to end?

Dinner at 38 thousand feet, no matter how tangential to the truly tasty, always feels like an adventure. My taste buds have another opinion, miss the flavors of Sri Lanka. With that, I sleep.

2018-05-16  SRI LANKA TO MALDIVES TO ISTANBUL TO LONDON TO BARCELONA – PART 2

“We can tell when the Northern Lights are out because we can hear the Chinese scream."

By the time we get to Gatwick we have crunched elbows through an airborne serial dining experience of a sandwich, 2 dinners, and 2 breakfasts, schlepped our carry-on through 4 security checks, and dozed across blurry time zones covering the Indian Ocean, the Arabian Peninsula, a chunk of the Middle East and a much bigger chunk of Europe. 

The meals are unfortunate and the security checks (after the first one, which makes sense) are unnecessary, proforma exercises, futile inconveniences. The one at Gatwick Airport is a surprise though, carefully thought through by designers more familiar with people than cattle, and managed by polite facilitators, not prison warden wannabes with control issues. Bravo Gatwick!

The slow ooze down the serpentine line at Gatwick Passport Control has its rewards. She's young, silver blonde, beautiful, and serves up a tantalizing smorgasbord of tidbits about her native Finland, now up a few notches on our list. There are the Northern Lights, even if they have been co-opted by Chinese tourists. (See the tidbit at the top.)

Vueling Airlines is Spain's budget carrier, without frills, but sparkly. For $43 we get to fly across Western Europe…and the seats are even inside the airplane...with very attractive flight attendants. He is handsome in the Spanish soap opera boy-next-door-dream-boat-mold, but with designer stubble. She is a Catherine Zeta-Jones double, her beauty hobbled by a slight attitude, and by a most unfortunate flat, round, headthingy stuck on the side of her head at an angle on the tipsy side of precarious.

Dennis suggests she fell onto a table of tapas plates and no one has had the courage to tell her “That Look Doesn’t Work for You”. (Or for anyone else, I suspect, other than a drag queen with a mountainous coiffure and a food fetish or frisbee fixation. Maybe.)

We climb steeply leaving England, then France, below thick northern clouds. We fly east of true south, but south nonetheless. The clouds can’t follow, fall apart, become puffs patting the snowy peaks of the Pyrenees, and then Spain stretches flat to the blue Mediterranean. 

We land in Barcelona, 2 airlines, 3.5 time zones, 4 take-offs, 4 landings, 4 countries, 5 security checks, 6 meals, 24 hours, and 9935 kilometers after leaving Sri Lanka.

 
We walk the last 1 kilometer from the airport bus to our AirBnB.

2018-05-17  BACK TO BARCELONA– DAY 1

“My grandmother made croquettes like these”.

It's not the two strong beers talking. The croquette sampler at Le Petit Paris is six tasty bites of memory. Grandma's were bigger, hefty, light potato pillows with a mozzarella core and fried casing, crisp and soft and gooey and unforgettable, even 60 years since I last heard that gentle ‘mangia, mangia'. I get why Proust's one taste of a cookie led him to write seven volumes of ‘Remembrance of Things Past’. I forego seven volumes and concentrate on the 6 croquettes…and the next goodies. Caramelized apple and blue cheese on crisp baguette, and patatas bravas, spuds in cheesy/chili sauce, follow the croquettes and chase the memory of yesterday's airborne glop from my taste buds.

That was last night, 10 pm, and fashionably the right time to eat. Spaniards end one day, late, with gastronomic bang, begin the next, also late, with a whimper that barely registers on our dietary Richter scale. I prefer the reverse, but such croquettes are not to be denied.

This morning, Nescafé (Or “No es café” according to travel buddy, Luis), milk, and yummy pound cake, all late night post-croquette purchases, do us for day starters on our tiny balcony, through the shuttered French doors, and just one chair deep, two chairs (and some wiggle room) long, We hang 6 stories up over the trees of Carrer d'Arago, our home street until we leave for Andorra in 2 days. All the apartment buildings on our street have thin balconies like ours, one per residence, human aeries bound by artful railings and flowers, sky gardens. A few hang the flag of Catalonia, none the flag of Spain.

We walk 20 minutes up these new streets to Wakka, our foodie discovery last March, sit at a sidewalk table, order. My wrap is a tongue orgasm: chicken, Serrano ham bacon, cream cheese, greens, an inspired dressing. Dennis’ sandwich is a smoked salmon and pistachio omelette, equally good. Cook Gabriel runs out and grabs our hands. “I made it special for you”.  The man can cook, oh, can he cook. “The beer is from me.” Cappuccino with a beer chaser works when the catalyst is such beaming good will. We'll go back tomorrow.

Then it is our turn to enter the Sagrada Familia. I usually avoid churches, especially big ones, though not sacred spaces per se.

Buddhas are abstractions of an inward state, calming. The Hindu images are wild imaginings of the unimaginable, in no way real, often fun. Mosques have no human images, just space in which to contemplate divinity. But Catholic church imagery is too obvious, too literal, for me.

So,I go to Gaudi’s Sagrada Familia because friends whose opinions I respect have urged me to, expectations muted.

It wins me over with my first sight of the whimsy of its exterior. And bowls me over inside. The central image of that faith hangs suspended, a tiny almost abstract particle, in a space that soars into brilliant light, irradiated, and unencumbered with saints and other didactic intrusions. The Sagrada Familia doesn't tell about the divine. It gives it a place.

The rest is up to us.

2018-05-18  BACK TO BARCELONA – DAY 2

Gaudi = gaudy???

No, our word ‘gaudy’ was not spawned in reviews of architect Gaudi's over-the-top confections. The word predates those by centuries. It may derive from words meaning ‘ornament’ or ‘rejoice’… or ‘delight in', which we certainly do, rejoicing in Gaudi’s exuberance refusal of straight lines and right angles. He melts geometry to produce riveting eye candy. No, not gaudy. Tasty. And in La Sagrada Familia, something both deeper and higher.

I realize why I’ve moved away from those programmed headset self-guided tour. They reduce great places to tiny details, scholarship beffudling experience, the part preventing the whole from taking hold, offering a taste, but no flavor. Mywould put it this way: ‘mangia, mangia’ (translation: one strand of spaghetti has only a truncated story to tell your taste buds’.

We spend the late afternoon at Wakka , nursing , sandwiches, fruit juice, beers, and conversation. Jonathan has studied Chinese medicine. I know now what meridian to press, how and where to stop diarrhea. It’s not where you think.

Gabriel, chef extraordinaire, has lived in Australia, travelled in Canada and the USA. He speaks 3 languages, including superb English. In the USA he’d be shot by a toothless, brainless gun nut who can’t read or write his own mother tongue (even though it was ‘good enough for Jesus Christ’) encouraged by That Person s**tting in the White House. We spend the afternoon thankful for shared experiences, kindness, respect, openness, budding friendship.

We leave the guys hoping that soon those same values will once again—and soon---regain their rightful place in our country:

The Statue of Liberty: Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore

2018-05-19  ANDORRA

‘Ya Gotta Have A Gimmick’…

….sing the strippers in ‘Gypsy’.

Europe’s smallest countries listened.

Vatican City, has the Church, crosses, and salvation (and for some, men in long dresses and funny hats, or the hunky Swiss Guards in tights, or women in short supply)

Monaco, has the Casino, roulette wheels, and hope

Andorra has the Mall, discounts, freedom from taxes…and you get a receipt.

For centuries it was a sleepy medieval vestigial of cow paths and spectacular scenery hanging in the mountains between France and Spain. Then the skiers discovered it. And Andorra discovered tourists will buy anything. The Unspoiled Shangri La has been malled into a theme park, Tax-Free Nirvana.

Still, the setting is spectacular, the former cow paths ramble, and charm peeks out now and then between clusters of franchises, parfumeries, and shops catering to all fetishes of the electronic-addicted. We even had a good meal, in the sun, accompanied by geraniums. Andorra The Mall is far from a washout.

The 4-hour bus ride from Barcelona is however a stunner, worth the trip.

Barcelona and the Mediterranean behind us, the landscape starts out soft, the new crops green, the horizon sharpened by the angles of stone and tile roofed villages. Red poppies and something white rim the roads and fields. This is a landscape of guitars.

The mountains start as droopy heaps, pliable leftovers from more serious geologic works.

Then the earth in front tilts, raw and rocky, too steep to hold green, or red, or white.

At 47 kilometers before the borders of Andorra, the road gives us to a cleft in the rock then bores straight through it. Again, and again, tunnels strung through the dark and snippets of light.

Horizons lost, we are tunnel troglodytes. Then...the light stays.

We are in Andorra.

The flowers are yellow. Snow caps the mountains, walls all around us.

Passports are checked, not stamped. (It's the forty-somethingth country we have been to since 2012. We don't need any more stamps.) Wallets and credit cards at the ready, the other passengers follow the smell of money ‘saved’.

We settle for lunch, red wine, and geraniums.

2018-05-20 BARCELONA, AGAIN

At 7am on a Sunday, well slept, we leave Hotel Jordi, and walk down the deserted slope to the bus station. Stores are closed but still bursting with goodies, undiminished by even yesterday's hordes. Truth be told, my credit card does not leave Andorra unscathed. I replaced my ragged and forgetful Casio watch, broken band and all, with a spiffy descendant that also lets me lose track of time in 2 time zones simultaneously.

The weather grinches are wrong. There is no rain on our parade through this spectacular landscape, mountains floating above valley mists in early sunlight. To the east, backlit poppies rage translucent red against the green fields. To the west the same sunlight singes the stacked stones of hilltop villages. Some people sleep. We do not.

By mid-afternoon we have bussed and trained the 15 miles south from Barcelona proper to our last AirBnB in Spain. On the way we regain a taste of Turkey with perfect siş tavuk (ok, chicken kebabs) in the town where we abandon the bus for one stop on the train to Castelldelfels right on the Mediterranean. Our host’s parents welcome us with warmth, coffee, and Spanish. The apartment is brilliant with Mediterranean light. We sip our coffee on the balcony that runs the width of the apartment and share it with flowers. The sea is a short block away. Our room also has a small balcony, though we prefer it in Spanish, as mother Vivian calls it, la terrazita. Once again, we have lucked out.

The sand is warm, the Mediterranean chills my feet and shins. I wonder if they remember the first and last time they steeped in this ‘sea at the center of the world’, in Nice, 57 years ago. Many of the women are topless…well, clearly they have tops, in fact. I'd LOVE to see the reaction of those Christian Wrong Breast Bigots who think women nursing in public is ‘obscene'. (Funny, they have no comment about those pictures of Mrs. tRump when she was selling views of her bits on the Internet. And, by the way, I have no problem with what she did back then, either. It's the hypocrisy that rankles.)

We join leftover beachers for dinner by the sea…at 10pm, our stomachs now adjusted to Spanish notions of meal time. Our pizzas go down so easily, but raggedly compared to the three scoops of silken gelato, crema , xocolata, caramelo, that follow. Across the sand, the Mediterranean ripples.

2018-05-21 CASTELLDELFELS AND SITGES

“Domestic flight”.

Says Manuel's father and everyone gapes. He grins the equivalent of “betcha that surprised you.” And he got that right. We thought English an unknown territory for him and his wife. Their son, Manuel, can get by (and just about anything else in those jeans and tee shirt ). Manuel's equally gene-blessed girlfriend fills in the blanks. Dad’s English has been sitting somewhere deep, conjured by our conversation about cheap travel around Europe. He grins again. We see where Manuel gets his charm. It's a nice coda to a lovely day.

Earlier in the day we take the train to the town of Sitges, just 20 minutes down the coast from Castelldelfels, mountains to the right, blue sea to the left, warming sun above. The town is surpassingly lovely, its narrow streets and balconies, survivors of a more aggressive chunk of history, now quiet and draped with flowers, red geraniums setting the color scheme. This is where Barcelona comes to chill. And play. And…

We see clusters of women scoping out the possibilities, but judging from the lithe physiques and fashion sense of the clusters of men, the ladies are not only barking up the wrong tree, they’re not even in the right forest.

Chocolate croissants and cappuccinos, brunch of choice for the no longer lithe, keeps us happy at the sidewalk café. A truly stunning teenager from the next tiny table asks us to snap a photo of her, her equally gorgeous friend, and their boyfriends, worthy of the two goddesses. Spain’s genes have a future.

I find a replacement for my telescoping walking stick, lost somewhere in Sri Lanka. It had a compass and a light, and a pedigree from a market in Rwanda. This one is less adventurous but also less likely to send security guards into Search Mode.

This day, the day before the end of the trip goes too fast. Memories tumble and stack, lose sequence, pop up and out from places deep, but retrieved when needed, our own ‘Domestic flights’.

2018-05-22 CASTELLDELFELS TO FLORIDA

“Sehr gut!”

And I mean it. The chicken kebabs at Kapodokya Turc Bar in Castelldelfels are dream-making. The cook is Turkish, speaks German, no English. I exhume fragments from my 1963 German 101 class. We connect over intent, and gestures, and drool.

Barcelona airport has no signs in any language directing us to Norwegian Air. Terminal 1 is a bust. Terminal Two is a long shuttle ride away. It also lacks signs. And the shuttle driver has disappeared. “Norwegian?” and a helpful passerby nods. Inside, security and passport control are a breeze. Finding Gates WY not so much. The signs peter out or are angled oddly and ambiguously. Apparently getting from HERE to THERE is no great priority to the Spanish, wandering being more the thing. I'm beginning to understand all those Spanish voyages in the 14 and 15 hundreds. They didn’t discover the New World so much as bump into it while trying to find something else. Even Chris Colombus said so.

At 18:40 we lift off, for Ft. Lauderdale, 9 hours and 6 time zones west. We two share 3 comfortable seats, the middle seat our dining table for our carry-on empanadas. Our $364 roundtrip Ft. Lauderdale-Barcelona Economy gets us a seat. Everything else, including drinks, meals, headphones, blankets is pay as you go…except the bathroom, still free as you go. At that price I can pass on airline food and carry my own water and headsets.

The film ‘Three Billboards outside Epping, Missouri’ is stupendously well acted by the three main characters, 2 of whom won Oscars. It reminds us to know the facts, that violence is never the answer, and to be kind.

Then we land.

TURKEY TRIP - APRIL 19, 2018 TO APRIL 24, 2018

TURKEY

April 19, 2018 to April 24, 2018

2018-04-19 YEREVAN VIA ATHENS TO ISTANBUL

It’s our 8^th airport since leaving Ft. Lauderdale 24 days ago.

At 2 am Armenia's Yerevan International is a hassle-free scurry. We change planes in Athens, and by 10 am are flinging our packs into friend Zeki's car outside Arrivals at Istanbul's Attaturk International in front of the memorial to the many people killed in the bombing there 2 years ago.

Zeki has been a friend since he welcomed us to Hotel Peninsula 6 or 7 years ago. We’ve lost track of how many times we've returned to our favorite city since then. He now has a wife, 3-year old son, and a new wholesale textile business. We, as he and partner Bariş point out, are still wearing the same clothes we were wearing the first time they met us. (True. But, our Travel Drag makes up in convenience what it lacks in variety. And we do wash it. See below.)

At the new shop, the guys glue fabric to sample cards while we catch up…and scour Aegean Airlines breakfast glop from our taste buds with fresh crusty baguette, cheese, yoghurt, butter, olives, and Turkish tea, our solvent of choice. Three glasses is the custom. We lose count. Bladders do not.

By noon we’ve met Gani and Aziz at the front desk and are setting up camp for 5 days in Sultan Hotel (unpacking takes 3.5 minutes), dealing with all that tea (ditto), and fighting heavy eye lids (they win, ditto, again).

By 5 we drop off Armenia Travel Drag to Rachep at the local washerie, turn away from the Sea of Marmara, cut diagonally across the neighborhood mini-park past kids playing in the fountain, and thread up the steep slope to the tram line in Sultanahmet. The houses are old, the streets as convoluted and twisted as the history of this most engrossing of cities. This is a new neighborhood for us. We take notes: pomegranate juice stand there, kebab place next door, general store (we get a bar of bath soap), more restaurants further up the street.

At the top of the hill of Sultanahmet we are in old ground, anchored by the minarets of the Blue Mosque and Aya Sofia, two of Morher Earth's glories. At one end of the park that links them is ‘the world’s largest tulip painting', a floral reproduction of a Turkish carpet in stiff-necked tulips, now almost ready to give in to the warming weather and lie down til next year.

We follow the tram line down off the hill towards the Golden Horn.

The Istanbul trams are superb, but riding through these streets is punishing self-denial. Walking is ambrosia-ed hedonism, my kind. We skirt the shops selling baklava in all its possible forms, stacks of tulip-hued Turkish Delight, lokantasi (cafeterias) with trays of improbably beautiful foods, women rolling out thin strips of dough, wrapping them around greens, garlic, cheese and baking them briefly crisp, pungent.

We walk on. We have even better things in store.

Husseyn, Ihsan, and Metin, the chef, grab and hug us. We're 7 stories up on a rooftop with a 270 -degree view from the Golden Horn, to the Bosporus, sweeping across what may be the world's most evocative city scape. Not even this, and the minarets struck golden by the sun, can upstage this greeting.

We met Husseyn and Ihsan 6 or 7 years ago when they hustled into the restaurant where they worked and where Metin practiced his culinary sorcery. Our taste buds and growing affection have followed them through several job, as a set and separate. They are together again at Roof Mezes, a move up for them and out of price range for us. They know it. ‘No problem’, winks Ihsan. The appetizers, tea, heaven-inspired dessert have no home on the bill. Our appetite for Metin’s sublime chunks of marinated chicken on a bed of eggplant purée is now the stuff of legend. It's not on the menu but appears anyway. Hugely discounted. Huseyn delivers katmer, ice cream sealed in a thin warm crepe. And winks, Selfies seal the night. We'll return in a few days.

Thus, Istanbul has welcomed us.

2018-04-20 ISTANBUL DAY 1

Delores (Spain), and Maria (Peru), are up for it.

Sisters-in-law and partners in adventure they sit out the morning rain with us in the bright, tiny lobby of Sultan. Tomorrow we'll lead them to the commuter ferry and zig up the Golden Horn to watch Istanbul absorb the sunset. Now, we trade stories. Gani serves tea. The morning and rain pass. Istanbul sucks us into its light.

Down here, between Little Aya Sofia Mosque and the park, our neighborhood jumps starts the day. Pomegranate Guy stacks his stock, rain-polished and juicy rubies. His brother flips a switch and the vertical spit slowly bakes a two-foot stack of thin sliced chicken into lunch. The shaggy puppy in the yard by the police station rolls on its back and nuzzles its mother, bigger and shaggier. The Rottweilers, off-duty, and being dogs, are in in no hurry to start the day. They sleep, snort, and snore in the sun.

Up the hill, Istanbul vibrates. After two years of scorn, the tourists have returned. Not the Americans, of course. We’re afraid of everything, convenient neuroses for 45 and his gang. Europeans flock to their closest taste of the exotic. The Chinese from mainland China are here in great avalanches, with a skill in bottle-necking, and the new tourist self-centered tendencies to take up too much space, make too much noise, and ignore everyone and everything not on their checklists. They’ll get the hang of it eventually. Some may even survive this larval state as tourists, and emerge as travelers.

We all flow down Divan Yolu Street (Caddessi in Turkish). It has been the main road over this hill since the Romans laid stones 2,000 years ago. Trams, not chariots, run down the middle now, but Rome's descendants still jam the road. We join them on the narrow sidewalks, neutral territory between the rails and the shops. In Mom's, famous for furnishings, high prices, and traditional foods, a babushka in the window wall sits on carpets and rolls out translucent ovals of dough, Turkey's delicious sibling of France’s crêpes. We pass. For now. The yards of baklava offer a taste of heaven. A glimpse adds inches to my waistline.

The 5000-year history of these hills and this place unroll over the many venues of the Archeology Museum, fascinating in small detail, ultimately stifling. We take refuge from stones and commentary outside, among the tulips.

Memory of the morning's rain-washed rubies stops us at Pomegranate Guy. ‘Big, not big?’ We go for big, sit, and sip, tempted by the spit of chicken ready to deliver another of Turkey's culinary gifts.

Our day ends quietly, a soft day of small things.

Checklist? Really?

2018-04-21 ISTANBUL.DAY 2

‘And you didn't told that u r coming’

Unstoppable Abdalbaset, he of the puppy dog energy and continent-wide smiles, discovers that we are all in Istanbul again. He has a very tenuous grip on the idea that being in school means being IN school. He's not even on the same continent. I suspect the address attached to his brain does not include Planet Earth. But he is delightful and we'd love to see him. Messages fly, appointments made, messages crash land. We never do catch up.

‘I will come visit to u in USA'. (Daddy may be a ‘dictatorship', but Daddy is clearly loaded).

Disappointment is buried in an adventure with Delores and Maria zig zagging up the Golden Horn on the commuter ferry, our favorite one-dollar bargain. It’s our salutation and valedictory to Istanbul on every visit. We ferry first across the Bosporus to ‘the Asian side', and five minutes later squeeze through the wicket and race the crowds to the top deck seats for the voyage back across the Bosporus to ‘the European side’. Not even Phineas Fogg who went ‘Around the World in Eighty Days' can touch that intercontinental sprint.The ferry joins an armada stitching the Black Sea, the Sea of Marmara, and Turkey to the rest of the planet.

We’re small fry,but stuffed to the gills. Tourism has recovered in Turkey, and the world has arrived. The Italians and Spanish talk so anyone in earshot (that is, within a half mile) can hear, the Italians adding semaphore for the rest. Turks jostle. Russians, Chinese, Koreans shove. Americans bulge out of inappropriate cruise wear. Japanese evaporate in paroxysms of politeness. A young Kurdish man in his tell take baggy trousers and vest places his hand on his chest, smiles, and tilts his handsome head.

We wave goodbye to Delores and Maria, who stay behind, turn and walk on the levitated old steel of the Galata Bridge across the Bosporus from New Istanbul to the minaretted glory, Old Istanbul, ‘our town'. We pass fishermen, lines filaments in gold, and restaurants hawking fish sandwiches. We continue, climbing from the pier up ancient Divan Yolu. At day's end we succumb to singed Turkish gözleme, blessed love-child of flatbread and crêpe, one with spinach, the other with ‘shrooms', all washed down with icy beer served in copper cups.

We will do it all again next year.

2018-04-22 ISTANBUL DAY 3

I'm engaged.

At least twice.

There are twenty million people in Istanbul. At 8pm on this Sunday night all of them are in Car 4 of the Istanbul Metro M2 Red Line to Kirazli, packed beyond carnal knowledge, and waaaay beyond home base, into a true full body Grand Slam by Strangers With Privileges. I don’t know the local rules of engagement, but I suspect repeated full body contact is involved. One more lurch and I’ll be picking out curtains. But with whom? And with how many?

We are on our way to Istanbul's western and northern suburbs, apparently somewhere over the border in Bulgaria, perhaps even Romania. The number of babushkas slammed against my face suggest the latter. Zeki promises we'll see Muzeyyn, and 3-year old Yusuf, and eat our fill of tantuni, Turkey's take on tacos. That seems worth the trip.

And it is.

This is our Turkey. Days here are friend and food rich.

Earlier, at noon, we ferry across to Asia again to spend the day with Nüri Demiröglu, met several years ago watching the sun set over the white hills of Cappadocia in central Turkey, and a friend since via WhatsApp and two reunions. We sit now sipping tea watching the sun play over the white caps of the Bosporus. Tea Guy moves on, joining Rose Lady, Tiara Guy, Pretzel Guy, and Bubble Machine Boy, bright colors, all, against the blue of the Bosporus. Tissue Boy is little, eyes both distracted and focused, challenged in some way, with a sweet smile. I buy a package, 25 cents. He pulls another pack from his bag, holds it up, walks on, gently.

Nüri has news. Next time we meet there will be a Mrs. Demiröglu. He invites us to join 998 other guests at the wedding in his home town in southern Turkey late next September. If we had known sooner we could have nudged our September return to Ethiopia and Madagascar a few days earlier and been here for the wedding. My taste buds go into mourning.

Other news comes out over pide, Turkey's version of pizza, and kneffe, Turkey's crisp noodle and syrup rival to baklava, served warm, and wrenchingly good. Nüri may come to the USA in June if his boss comes through. This will be a business trip. (Nüri helps match Turkish students with English language immersion programs.) The plan floats by Vancouver, Seattle, New York then lands with a big bang in Miami. Twenty-seven year old Nüri is a kindred soul travel junkie, super big time. Plans, itineraries, web sites sprinkle, dot, then fill the conversation. This will happen. If not, we will see him and his wife in Spring 2019. It's time we spent a long time traveling across Turkey.

Later in the night, Istanbul Metro M2 arranges my engagement/s. We leave the arrangements to the babushkas on the train and escape into the night.

2018-04-23 ISTANBUL DAY 4

We like last days to be easy.

The somnolent film crew ‘working' on waiting to continue filming their TV serial fill our small square. ‘Many films here' says Desk Guy, Gani. This is Old Istanbul made for the camera: narrow streets, wooden houses, balconies, a tiny mosque, Kebab Guy, Pomegranate Guy, the park, dozing dogs, furtive cats, babushkas comparing notes, kids playing in the fountain, and the Sea of Marmara just over there lending it’s reflected light.

We sidle by, turn the corner, then a tight left into our breakfast place, pull out our chairs, and ‘hi' to Bana, Breakfast Lady. Turkish veggie omelets, bread, cappuccinos fuel our last day. Bana is almost sullen at first, then exuberant as she warms to whatever topic excites her today: bad fast food, good vegetables, a book about Australian Aborigines. She Is a mini-drama.

Outside the film crew still looks bored. A generously gifted ingenue rubs her resumé against an available chest. I wonder what kind of film this is. Will the babushkas take note…or notes?

We take the easy route across the face of the hill, then up the gentle slope to the Roman Hippodrome, between the Blue Mosque and Aya Sofia, and then down Divan Yolu on the other side to see Hosseyn, Ihsan, and Metin once more. The view is an insistent disturbance to the task at hand: our Trip Advisor review. Ihsan hangs over the screen as we write. As always, he has a comment. ‘The chicken dish is light. You won't get bloated’. ‘Did you take a picture at night?’ ‘Come on! That's not a good picture.’ Done finally, over Metin's chicken, baked fish, dessert, we meet his approval. ‘You are a poemster’…a label I like. The bill is a fraction of what it should be. Hugs and cheek rubs soften the goodbyes.

We know we will be back in 2019, easy decision.

Dennis has felt some rumbles in the nether regions for a few days, maybe due to his cold and or to diet or to diet change to. My system is impervious to changes in diet, less so to absorbing the effects of the sheer volume of food. We take the tram back home. It's a holiday (Children's Day) and the crowds are stuffing the trams. We are extruded at Sultanahmet, bachelor status uncompromised.

At ten we say goodbye to Gani, Aziz and Sultan Hotel. And to our Istanbul, city of friends. That's not so easy.

GEORGIA-ARMENIA TRIP - APRIL 13, 2018 TO APRIL 18, 2018

GEORGIA

April 13, 2018 to April 15, 2018

2018-04-12 LONDON TO GEORGIA

‘I don't like to say goodbye’ 

Stupendously charming 21-year old Abdalbaset (Ibrahim Mohammed …and it goes on from there, each name a link to a direct paternal ancestor) hefts his back pack and waves goodbye, but not without a ‘salaam aleichem’, peace be with you. We miss him and his fatigue-shattering laugh immediately.

He has been entertaining us with his open-faced sweet charm and stories of his native Libya since he introduced himself over our seat backs on the bus to the airport three hours ago. Now, way too many hours of travel from London this morning weigh us down here at Istanbul's other airport. Abdal is a natural buoy. 

He unfolds his life for us.

There's his studies (‘my father ordered me be doctor. It is boring. I want to study business.I  want travel like you’), his father (‘he is a little bit dictatorship’), country (‘old, old, old places, before Egypt, and Greek, too, better than Turkey, many deserts, and the places with water in the desert'), food (‘so good, food no other place has). He won't let us pay for our cold water and his coffee (‘I am addict'.)

On an earlier leg of our trip Dennis wakes from his drowse on a comfy Turkish bus. The banks lining the 8-lane inch-worm path of the highway from Istanbul’s Attaturk airport are a linear garden, dropping color mile after mile. Some are wall gardens, vertical designs in great cursive sweeps of color. The flat gardens are the glory. Tulips, native here, briefly the most valuable commodity in the world during the Tulip Craze in besotted 17th century Europe, more so even than gold, spread their rainbow chalices under Istanbul's sky. ‘You must come back to Turkey in April' has been friend Zeki's temptation for years. He is so right.

2019, here we come

This trip, in 2018, we begin in London, leaping times zones and continents. Up at 7. London to Istanbul’s Attaturk Airport. Shuttle bus to Taksim, Istanbul’s ‘happening district. Dinner in Taksim. Shuttle bus across into Asia and Sobiha Gökchen Airport. Plane to Tbilisi, Georgia. Ride into the city at 4 am with George, owner of Parallax Hotel. Two planes, two buses, a car and 24 hours after waking in London at the west end of Europe, we fall into bed in the very eastern most 'European' country, straddling the Caucasus, and technically in Asia. Azerbaijan and Iran are just to the east.

In between there is Abdal, another loop in the gentle string between us and the many good people on Mother Earth. This is why we travel

2018-04-13 GEORGIA DAY 1

The baby cries.

‘No problem’ says Beka. He puts his coffee down on a stone railing picks up, cuddles, and kisses Marsho, chubby, and with startling pale green and silver eyes like her father's, and says ‘I take you’ We nod at the abandoned coffee. He laughs. ‘Later I come back for coffee'.

Beka overheard us trying to figure out how to get to the Opera House, and with Marsho wrapped in his arms leads us down alleys, over torn up streets, and tells a bit of his story. He's an artist. There is no work here. He and his pregnant wife went to Sweden for work. Marsho was born there but that did not get them any special rights to stay (as her birth would in the US, he reminds us). They had to leave. Now they are here again. He speaks Russian, Georgian, English, some Azerbaijani. (‘I don't know how.There are many different people here. I just speak.’). He leads us to a spot with a clear path to Tbilisi‘s main drag. If we need any help, ‘please call me'. We take his number, another connection. You never know. Surprises happen.

Beka’s finger points our route and we free-form it from there. Tbilisi is rebuilding everywhere. Roads dead end in construction sites. This is like navigating Boston’s cow paths-cum-streets, in blinders. There are benefits to blind wandering. Tbilisi has a seductive under-fragrance everywhere: baking bread. Another creeps in and we follow it to a park filled with the wonders of Georgia’s gardens Three foot tall torches of truly long-stemmed roses tower over bins of lilacs spilling huge purple pompoms against walls of tulips, carnations, fresias, anemones.

Georgians seem a dour-faced and unsmiling lot. At first. They just don’t beam in public. Make a connection in a shop, on the street, need help, and they are friendly and helpful, justly famous for hospitality. It's not effusive, but real.

It’s true of George, owner of Parallax Hostel, who picks us up at 4am, Beka and chubby Marsho.and Raju, transplanted from Mumbai, and 24/7 guy in charge at Parallax. The house is a few hundred years old, now 4 guest rooms, and a dormitory. We are comfortable in our room with private bathroom, two single beds and a double. Downstairs is a kitchen, all equipment supplied. Upstairs is a covered balcony overlooking the narrow street. It's where we meet Michael from India, share travels.

We're a short walk, corkscrewing through the deceiving streets, from Carrefour, the best supermarket we have ever seen. It has guys baking fresh bread in a traditional tandoori style oven, and a charming lady who helps us select one of Georgia's famous wines.

Best? We’re a few paces from Restaurant Imeruli.Sakhli. Our first full meal is:

Strips of eggplants seasoned with coriander and wrapped around ground walnuts, pomegranate seeds on top.

Red beans stewed with sprigs of cilantro and a hint of chili peppers.

Thick dumplings filled with broth, ground meat, spices.

2 big beers

The bill Is 14.7 Gel. That's $5.86.

Yes, we're happy with Parallax Hostel and with Tbilisi.

2018-04-14 GEORGIA DAY 2

She dies, of course.

But first we turn our legs into stubble walking through Tbilisi to its Old Town. Old it is, founded 1600 years ago. Worn walls, not quite rubble, and narrow twisting streets, tell of an embattled and dangerous past. Churches tell another story. Perhaps. Candles release the gold of icons, luminous eyes forward, concentration upwards into the dark vaults, then to heaven. Outside a man covers himself in expansive, generous signs of the cross. A woman kisses the door jam. Christianity came here, early formed, has lasted, an intense part of life for some, even after decades under the Soviets.

Lifted through the air way above Tbilisi and its river by wires, pulleys, and magic, we grab terra firma, the stones of an ancient fort, a true aerie. I offer to rescue a gaggle of traveling buddies from selfie-dom defeated by the view. My reward is a half dozen genuinely delighted smiles. They are from Iran, perambulating Persians, all smiles, again, as we commiserate about our governments.

It's 6:30 when we join the crowding before the red and white striped Moorish style opera house. Three hours later the curtain rings down to roars, stomping, waving arms, and Puccini’s Chinese fantasy opera, Turandot, has enslaved another audience.

Tbilisi Opera and Ballet Theater is a gilded 19^th century confection, layered in tiny box stalls up to a massive crystal chandelier, icy topping. It's an appropriate setting for this brilliant piece, tour de force for any opera company, and especially for the two leads, singing stratospherically over Puccini's largest and lushest orchestrations They do it. And then some. The super-nova, even in this star- glutted performance, is the conductor. He leads, possessed by the music, explosive, demonic in drive and intensity. We are lifted off our seats by the sound. At the end, the two lovers, united by their self- absorbed maniacal purpose, do recognize briefly the sacrifice of the slave girl who died, love unrequited, barely acknowledged, to save the tenor. Turandot is about privilege as it attaches to the powerful, deadly. But we applaud wildly.

5 years ago I was a mandarin in a dozen performances of this opera. I’m counting on a repeat in early 2019. Maybe without the Fu Manchu mustache. It itched.

2018-04-15 GEORGIA DAY 3

‘I was born here.’

We're standing in the narrow street in front of our hotel deep in a baby fest. Chubby Marsho bounces, beaming, arms outstretched, from hug to hug, a journey stamped with kisses…from daddy Beka, to beaming young and clearly besotted godfather, to George, young, ambitious owner of the hotel. He is related to everyone in this neighborhood in some way. Our hotel, 3 large rooms, a dormitory, kitchen, spread up a winding staircase to a rooftop ‘party room' and covered balcony is his family’s wooden house, has been for generations. After 9 years as Parallax Hotel, it's still just another door on Vakhtang Orbeliani, barely announced, its new life not intrusive. George, and we, like it that way.

So do 3 young computer guys, long-time buddies, up from neighboring Armenia for the weekend. They have stayed here before, and, like us, hang out on the balcony. Cheerful, always smiling Vache, efficient David, and serious faced Razmik warm to English, and ply us with a universal ice-breaker---chocolate (‘Armenian and very good'). They're bright and articulate about their country, now in the midst of a polarizing election. They sum it up succinctly: “He is Armenian Trump”.

They leave us with a taste of Armenia's fabled hospitality. Numbers tap-tapped into multiple mobiles they make us promise to call them when go south to Yerevan tomorrow. Done deal!

At night we sit and sip with George, and kind Raju, resident Indian house manager. The wine is good, gets George's nod of approval. He makes his own, of course, pretty much a standard past time in Georgia, perhaps the origin of grape wine. George spins magic out of a map of his country. Its beauty is sorcery.

A nod passes between us. Next year, again, in Spring.

ARMENIA

April 16, 2018 to April 18, 2018

2018-04-16 GEORGIA TO ARMENIA

Brad Pitt slides into the shot gun seat. Well, not THE Brad Pitt, but his twinnish younger brother. And even better looking. To quote Harvey Fierstein in Torch Song Trilogy ,’If he has an IQ over 30 there is no God.’ Time may tell if the universe is godless.

We are seven for the 9 am departure in the comfy marshrutka (minibus) for the 6-hour, $15 passage southward out of Georgia to Yerevan, Armenia.

To my left is Grandma, in black, and in charge. Good smells come from her bag. Behind are soft and disembodied voices, two. Our driver has a face carrying the DNA of Central Asia, angular, high cheeked, well beaked. He helps grandma in and out of our van, solicitous and attentive to us, too.

An hour of smooth roads lined by red poppies, yellow-green whatchmacallits, and fruit trees in high blossom, white and fluffy, and we are at the border.

Stamp, exit, ride across the back line on map, ‘been to Azerbaijan?’, stamp, and enter, welcomed, unsullied by a previous trip to enemy Azerbaijan.

Armenia looks different, the roads more sinuous as we climb into a range of the southern Caucasus. The slopes are fuzzy green with new growth, soft flannel backdrop for the sharp lines of stone villages and helmeted churches. 4 hours into the trip we reach 6223 feet, pass it, drop down off the pass. Above us wide patches of snow speckle the mountains, no longer green, dark, mammoth negative Dalmatians nuzzling the bright sky. Grandma taps me, points left out her window. Lake Sevan is immensely blue and immensely big, dazzling.

Brad speaks. Perfect English, only slightly accented.

‘Be prepared. There are demonstrations in Yerevan. It’s safe,but be prepared for adrenalin and adventure’. Don’t worry. You will be safe.’ (Note: The powerless President wants to become Prime Minister, a more powerful position. He's not popular. The people, especially the young people, are speaking.)

Brad arranges for the driver to drop us off near our AirBnB, and also the info that he speaks Armenian, Russian, and Polish, too. He smiles.

Yes, the universe is godless.

But not without its saints.

First to descend is the waiter who brings our cold draft beers at the sidewalk café a short walk from our drop off. Our AirBnB host, Chaga, is in Paris, but her cousins have stepped in, are at 13 Sayat-Nova, 3^rd Floor, to show us around her spacious digs, two bedrooms, kitchen, balcony, reams of sunlight through acres of window, washing machine, now ours, $76 for 3 nights.

It's home within 5 minutes.

2018-04-17 YEREVAN DAY 1

SIze does matter.

At least it did to the kings of ancient Armenia in 700bc or thereabouts. One ordered bulbous pottery jugs and metal cauldrons---capacity clearly marked---dedicated to wine. The biggest holds 1200 liters, about 320 gallons. It inhabits one end of the many rooms in Yerevan’s superb History of Armenia Museum.

My eyes usually glaze over after about an hour of dusty cases, fuzzy descriptions in museum-eze, intelligible only to the in-crowd, and pieces of cracked pots. Not so here. 500,000 year old stone tools invade and stay in my imagination. They were made by our 25,000 times great-grandmother.

We walk upwards through the history of this rich region. In 2000bc, great-granny wore a delicate gold necklace, filagree and carnelian ancestor to art deco, 4000 years ahead of its time. Sometime about 1200bc an astronomer fashioned a metal model of the heavens showing Earth, sun, moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. It carries a hint that he knew the planets---earth included--- were spheres.

We wear out by 300AD, when Christianity arrives, retreat back through history, down the stairs and out into Armenia's present. Republic Square and its famous singing fountains (mute until summer nights) are brilliant under clear skies. Yerevan gets a bad rap for air pollution. Not from us, and not today. It's glorious, the sun gentle.

As is what we see of the demonstrations against the unpopular President. There are crowds here in Republic Square, Center City, Yerevan. Some streets are blocked by young people sitting on benches. One is napping. Passers-by, slow down, or stop, or keep on with their early afternoon business. Uniformed official types look bored. Our news feeds, if they mention Armenia at all, spew the usual news-as-hyperbolic-entertainment hysteria: ‘Yerevan crippled by violence’, etcetera and so forth.

We stroll homeward, the warming sun filtered through Yerevan’s urban forest, and end the afternoon sipping cold draft beers outside the restaurant that served our taste buds so memorably last night. With food this good, people would flock. Maybe that king 2700 years ago put all that wine to good use, dallying with elegant ladies in their gold, under skies singing with the harmony of the spheres.

I hope so.

2018-04-18 YEREVAN DAY 2

‘It was a sound bomb, nobody was killed’.

Articulate Razmik, of the kind eyes, shrugs. ‘The leader of the demonstrations wants a soft demonstration. No guns, no violence.’ Will it make a difference, I ask. Shoulders rise, fall. ‘But, we have to do something.’

Armenians know something about oppression. A million were killed during the Turkish led genocide of the early 20^th century. The guys ask us to see the film ‘Promise’, about the genocide.

Raznik, Vache, and David, our balcony friends from Georgia, collect us this morning and lead us up sleek escalators that climb the slope of Yerevan’s spectacular Cafesjian Center for the Arts, contemporary art showplace, partner to the History Museum. At the top we are high above the city but way below the showpiece of this landscape, 17,000 foot Mt Ararat, perfect volcanic cone brilliant white against blue. It is sacred in Armenian tradition as the place where they emerged after Noah's flood, defining them. And it is now in Turkey, stolen along with the million lives of the genocide. It is Mother Earth's eternal reminder of the cost of hate and violence.

‘I hear Istanbul is beautiful. We don’t like Turkey, but there are good people everywhere.’ Razmik and the others lead us away.

We head into the hills. Stream beds become ravines then deep gorges. We climb to the 1^st century temple of Garni then to the 12^th century Monastery of Geghard, crossing from Sun Cult to Son Cult. Armenia makes a successful case for a return visit. The guys vote YES.

‘This place has energy.’

 ‘Smell the animal smell. It is so good. Better than the city.’

‘I love lasagne’

The five of us ride over rough roads through the white fluff of bursting apricot orchards, dropping morsels of our personalities. These guys are childhood friends. Vache just taught newly licensed David how to drive. David and Raz are helping Vach in his new computer career. They welcome and absorb us, seal the deal over home-made wine, fresh peach and cherry juice, cheese, REAL tomatoes, thick yoghurt, warm bread, and a two-foot platter of barbecued beef, pork, lamb, kebabs, sausage. Clearly size still matters in Armenia.

We drop Raz off near his home outside Yerevan with a bag of baked goodies for his wife and almost 4-month old Tigran. David and Vach walk with us until we convince them we know our way. The hugs and cheek rubs are real and deep.

 Armenia is no longer a shape on a map. It is the faces of these 3 guys who did not have to do what they did, but did it because ‘there are good people everywhere.’