The Road to (and from) Doha

Must be Hump Day in Southern Oman As we approached the Doha airport, there was one lane for rental car returns.  We drove at the prescribed 60kph speed limit and, of course, some idiot in a large SUV got right on our tail and kept flashing his lights and honking, despite having two other lanes to pass us.  Instead, the guy drove on the shoulder to the left of us, honking away.  Just a perfect microcosm of the Qatari mindset.  I don't know if I dislike any culture in the world more than I dislike Qataris. We checked in for our flight which had been delayed almost 8 hours (we were advised in advance, fortunately) and headed for the lounge and water glasses full of wine just to bring our chemistry back into balance😛.  We were headed for Salalah, Oman, which is about 400 air miles from Doha, but the trip took 2.5 hours because the Qataris aren't allowed to fly over Saudi or UAE airspace.  Instead, we aimed towards Iran, flew over the Strait of Hormuz an...

Doha World's Track and Field Championships The entire trip was pretty much planned around attending the World's Athletics (Track and Field) Championships in Doha.  While I spent a few hours wandering around in Doha during a layover some years back, this was my first lengthy stay in the Middle East since living there in 1982-3.  In short, I hated it then and ultimately would hate the atmosphere this time around.  With a population of around 3,000,000, Qatar is a pretty small place.  Of the 3,000,000, less than 1/3 are Qataris.  I don't believe I found one that I liked the entire trip and their character is much the same as the Saudi's; extremely arrogant and self righteous.  They treat the other 2/3's of the population like the slaves they are; poor people from the region just trying to make a living and putting up with abusive behavior and poor wages to send a few bucks back home when they get paid.  The lines at  Western Union type money tra...

Istanbul from Old Istanbul We arrived in Istanbul in the late afternoon, but the airport is about 35 miles from town, so we had to jump on a shuttle bus and head towards Taksim Square, a popular gathering spot.  From there we walked about 20 minutes through windy, hilly streets before we finally found our AirBnb, a beautiful rehab in one of the more artsy parts of town, with easy proximity to the popular old town which hosts the Blue Mosque among other iconic Istanbul sites.  Istanbul is a city of approximately 15 million, so our immediate impressions weren't totally positive.  One could hardly walk down the streets and the drivers paid no heed to pedestrians.  I questioned booking five nights there. The Blue Mosque Interior On day one we walked all the way to Old Town vs taking the tram, crossing the bridge over the Golden Horn which is an inlet from the Straits of Bosphorus.  We were able to visit the Blue Mosque as well as the spectacular Hagia Sop...

Rila Monastery I think out of pure exhaustion, we booked five nights in Sofia (pronounced SO-FEE-YA, not as in Loren).  The train trip from Bucharest allowed for a little leisure, though the zig zag slow route took about three times longer than it would have to drive and we arrived in Sofia late at night.  Was smart to buy a big bucket of KFC in Bucharest, as it was pretty much breakfast, lunch and dinner that day.  This was our first American chain food of the trip.  Border formalities were handled at the first stop in Bulgaria and then we had an hour to kill, so I ran into town and grabbed some beer.  Fortunately, we were about a 10 minute tram ride from the train station and were able to self check in to a nice apartment just a few minutes walk from the action (a long pedestrian only street).  We pretty much stayed in on day one and did nothing except find a popular local restaurant serving Bulgarian specialties (which was pretty much the same as ...

Our Apartment Building In Kiev was on the LP walking tour We arrived in Kiev rather late and its airport was also a bit of a ways from the center; still, for $15 we got a good ride with a nice English speaking gentleman who was moonlighting for some extra money. Imagine our surprise when our landlord turned out to be an American guy from SF! He made a killing in the IT biz, married a Ukrainian, moved to Kiev, got bored and started buying and rehabbing real estate, doing everything with a Western slant, so the place was simply fantastic and the sort of nice place you might expect to find in the US. Our backs got a whole lot better in Jay’s bed! Kiev Was a Fun Walking City After checking in, I hit the streets and WOW!….they felt like NYC. So much energy at 10PM on a Wednesday night and the first sounds I heard were of a band playing Psycho Killer at full blast at a sidewalk cafe. Along the way good street musicians were busking, including a 12 yo kid whose tone on t...

After a short flight on Moldovan Airlines (yikes!), we landed in Chisinau only to find a similar fate as in Belarus…..no taxis. I grabbed Sharon and yanked her onto a bus that was just pulling away. Sure, the odds were good it was going to the center of town, but there was a bit of a leap of faith; I like traveling this way! Pretty minimal English in Moldova and everything was in cyrillic, but as we found most everywhere else, there were a few younger folk around who spoke English and two of them guided us right to the hotel (Park Central), a lovely place on a pedestrian street near Chisinau’s version of Central Park. The check in staff was great and gave all info needed for the following day’s travels. The room was nice and the bed was terrific; our backs began to improve. The next day we did pretty much what everyone does in Moldova and that was to visit the Cricova Wine Cellars. We hopped on a bus and rode the 30 minutes to the winery, but found the only tour that...

Brasov Old Town Gate After riding for a half an hour to the outskirts of Chisinau, we were informed that our 11am bus had been canceled, but we were placed on the noon bus. Nice of the bus folks to send someone out to the station to find us. I needed to inform our Romanian landlord that we were going to be late and the girl in the cell card office was kind enough to let me use her mobile hotspot. Traveling without a SIM card has been a bit of a hassle, yet every time we need help, someone steps up and lets us use their phone. Makes little sense to buy SIM cards for short stays and though an EU SIM card works all over the EU, we’ve been jumping in and out of EU countries. Trust that I’ll be buying data in Doha to enjoy while watching the World’s. Rasnov Castle We pretty much hopped about to the major tourist sites in Romania, beginning with Brasov which might be called the capital of Transylvania. The bus ride was a brutal 9.5 hours, with hour long d...

They Don't Tear Down Lenin Statues in Belarus The visa on arrival system worked well. You are supposed to buy health insurance for all the days one spends in the country, but the immigration lady was nice enough to just accept our Medicare cards as proof of insurance and we passed quickly to the taxi booth where we were told there were no taxis for what’s close to an hour journey into the city. It seems incomprehensible why they placed the airport nearly 40 miles from town, out in the middle of nowhere, though we were later told that it’s near an important WWII victory site; still……. As for the taxi, we just dashed outside and got lucky enough to find someone to take us into town. The going rate is $30 and that’s what we were charged for what turned out to be a fantastic trip with the driver pointing out dozens of monuments and giving us what was essentially a free tour of the city before we arrived at a lovely apartment just a few subway stops from the center. T...