At Sea - Istanbul (Turkey) 1 - 2 May 2024     1 May 2024     At 9:00 our breakfast came. Sat on the balcony and being famished from the day before, we gobbled it down, then went back to bed and slept till 12:00. At 14:00 we went to the Eatery had a light lunch. Salad only. Managed to post a short video. Took me two hours. At 17:00 went for dinner in the Horizons restaurant,                Had steak and lobster and shrimp with a glass of Cabernet Sauvignon 11EU for a glass. Outrageous. At home I can make about 6lt of wine for that. And I don't want to brag, but much better than what we had. Went back to the cabin, wrote down some of our memories, while Rita went straight to bed.     2 May 2024 Istanbul     Woke up, had breakfast on the balcony. Rita was not feeling well and coughing. She had been coughing for a few days but today was worse. She decided she was going to stay on the ship and not take the excursion we had booked for the day. Told me to go on the excursion by myself, since we had already paid for it. So I did. Boarded the bus and went to the Blue Mosque.              It was so dark inside, that only these two pictures turned out. After the Mosque we went to the Grand Bazaar. It has 4000+ shops selling gender biased goods. At least 1000 shops selling jewelry, 1000 selling purses, 1000 selling ladies shoes and Turkish Delight etc. What happened to "DEI"? After about an hour I returned to our meeting place and met a couple from Portugal. He was Scottish but moved to Lisbon when they were married. We all agreed that the Bazaar was a humongous flee market, and that a couple of dozen stores could carry the variety of goods being sold in 4000+ shops. Then we were off to the Hagia Sofia. The line up was really long, so we all decided to skip it and go back to ship. When I arrived, Rita was coughing worse than when I had left. Told her we had to go to the ships medical center for her to be examined. It was around 15:30 and when we got to the medical center there was a sign that it would open at 16:00. Went to the piazza and sat down to wait. At 16:00 we went in to the reception and after Rita explained her condition she was immediately put into a room and given oxygen. Her oxygen levels were really low.                                               They did a multitude of test and the Covid test came back positive. The ship was supposed to leave at 17:00, it was now very close to that time. The doctor told us that Rita needed to go to the hospital immediately. Told me to go to our cabin to pick up our passports, and that there would be crew waiting there to pack our luggage. Sure enough there was a man and a woman waiting outside our cabin door when I arrived. Opened the safe, took out our passports and headed back to the Medical Center. They gave me a bill for $800.00+ USD, put Rita into a wheelchair and wheeled her off the ship. An ambulance was waiting for us at the port and Rita was put on a stretcher and loaded into the ambulance. Our luggage was already waiting for us there and was loaded into a taxi. The ambulance took off with sirens blaring. Hit a couple of bumps and Rita was holding on to the railing of the stretcher for dear life. As soon as we were off the dock, and into the city, we came to a dead stop. One of the attendants asked if we minded if he opened the window. He leaned out the opened window and started screaming at the drivers in the cars surrounding us. Pedestrians were looking back at us as they passed us by. Finally made it to the emergency at the hospital. Rita was given all kinds of tests including an MRI. After a couple of hours in the emergency Rita was loaded onto the stretcher again back in the ambulance, without the sirens, and transported to the Covid ward at a separate location from the hospital. She was put into a room with two beds in it. After settling in, I asked if there was a hotel nearby where I could stay. They said I could stay in the hospital on the second bed. Rita was on Oxygen for 4 days. A nurse came every couple of hours, day or night, to test her oxygen level, blood pressure and given intravenous fluids and medication. The food was absolutely horrible. Three meals a day that we could only eat only a few bites of. The only edible food was a fruit plate with nuts on the side, that they brought every day. We had internet, but we decided not to let our family know of our circumstances. Didn't want anyone to worry. So I wrote that the internet was horrible and that we would update everyone when we had better comunication. There was a mosque right outside our window. Every morning at 5:00, without fail, the minaret speakers would stat blaring " Allahu Akbar.....". This would go on for several minutes, and the call to prayer would be repeated every few hours. On one day, there were several hundreds of men, no women, praying on the street between the hospital and the mosque. They each had a prayer mat and filled the street for about an hour with the speakers blaring the "Adhan". We were in the hospital for 5 days, Finally on the fifth day the doctor gave Rita a clean bill of health. We were told to stay for a week in a hotel and then to come back to the hospital for tests, before we could travel. I immediately went on the internet and arranged for a hotel near the airport. Before we left, a young woman from "Ange Assistance" came with a so called interpreter who hardly spoke any English. They presented us with the hospital bill for $16,000.00+ USD. Rita had travel medical insurance with Pacific Blue Cross but we had to pay for the bill and then claim later. Our American Express has a high enough limit to pay for the bill, so I gave her my American Express card. She said they don't accept American Express. Gave her my MasterCard, which also has a high enough limit, they don't accept that either. Great. Gave her my debit card, not thinking that it has a daily limit way below the $16,000.00 USD. Gave her my Visa, again not thinking that it has a limit below the cost. I finally asked them to give me some time to move some money around on the internet, and they left. Tried to increase my Visa limit. That would take several days to be approved. I asked for them to come back and after about an hour on the phone with the bank, with my patience running out, we finally figured out how to pay for the bill. Since our Visa only has $5,000.00 CAD limit, we had to pay less than $5,000.00 CAD, pay the Visa off, pay less than $5,000.00 CAD, pay the Visa off, several times until the bill was paid. The interpreter was absolutely useless and I was using Google Translate on Rita's cell to communicate with them. They asked if we needed a hotel to be arranged, I told them I had already taken care of that. The interpreter said that the taxi to the hotel and back for the final tests were included in the hospital bill and that they would call for a taxi. Took our luggage to the foyer of the hospital and waited for a while for the taxi to arrive. The Menalo Hotel Premium that I had booked is located near the Istanbul airport, about 45 minutes away by car. The taxi left the hotel and ended up behind a garbage truck on a one lane street. We stopped at every building on the street and waited for the garbage to be dumped. Finally, after about 50 stops, the street widened and the taxi was able to go around and pass the garbage truck. On the freeway to the hotel, I studied the driving rules in Turkey. They are non existent, as far as I could tell. In the rest of the world on the freeways, at least in the countries that I have driven in, you drive in the right lane and pass in the left. That is the rule, not that all drivers follow it. In Turkey you can use any lane to pass, including the entrance and exit ramps. Finally the driver took an exit ramp, and this time instead of passing he actually exited the freeway.  There was a two lane road to the hotel which is about 1.5 km from the freeway. There were potholes in the road like I've never seen. They were big enough to swallow, and this is not hyperbole,  half the car. The taxi, several times, had to stop, wait for oncoming traffic to pass, and go around the potholes on the opposite side of the road. Finally arrived at the Menalo Hotel Premium and checked in. It was a nice clean hotel made up of 6 separate 3 story buildings. I was wondering why they had located it in what seemed to be a rural area with not even a small town nearby. We were given a nice spatious room, more like a suite, with an entrance hallway, a living room, and a bedroom, looking on to the road we had arrived on. Went to bed, and after 5 days on the uncomfortable hospital bed, slept like a log. That is until about 5 AM. The traffic started and the noise from the street was unbelievable. The hotel was built on a hill, above a gravel pit. The trucks coming up, were in low gear revving their engines, the ones going down were either using engine brakes, or brakes that squealed from the build up of dust on the pads. UNBEARABLE. As soon as I was able to get my clothes on, I was off to the reception desk. Told the clerk that we needed another room since we were staying for 9 days and we could not stand the noise. He assigned us another room and sent a golf cart they use to transport guests and their luggage to the different buildings. We were given another room-suite, in the building farthest from the road, overlooking a spacious grassy knoll and a forest. It had a nice patio with an evergreen hedge bordering it. But the most important thing was, that it was very quiet. Every morning I would walk to the restaurant in the main building and order breakfast. Eggs, either hard boiled or an omelet with buns, cheeses and a side of fruit. Turkey is a Muslim country, no bacon, no wine! Boring! It would be delivered to our room and it was a large enough portion to last us the day. There was a small fridge in the room to store the leftovers. We tried to order dinner once, veal steak, and to this day I can't figure out how you can ruin a veal steak. But they had the recipe down pat. We lived on eggs, cheese and fruit for the time we stayed. We also had a hot water kettle with instant coffee and tea bags. Finally on the 14th we received a Whatsapp message that a taxi would pick us up the next day and take us to the hospital for Rita's checkup. On the 15th the taxi arrived and after avoiding the humongous potholes we arrived at the hospital. Rita was given all kinds of tests, MRI Etc. After a long wait the doctor finally arrived and gave us the good news that Rita could travel, and Gamze, the lady who was arranging everything, gave us the bad news that the cost for the tests came to $1,983.08 USD. We waited for the taxi in the lobby of the hospital and went back to the hotel. As soon as we entered our hotel room I was on the computer searching for a flight home. Found a flight for the 16th with Turkish Air, from Istanbul to Frankfurt, and a Condor flight from Frankfurt to Vancouver. Notified Ken of our flight number and time of arrival, and started packing. Arranged for transportation to the airport at the front desk and then went to bed. The next morning we went to the hotel front desk and caught the shuttle, provided by the hotel, to the airport. On the flight from Istanbul to Frankfurt I was watching the monitor in front of me, tracking our flight path. The plane flew 12 km right over Szombathely. Felt like visiting our relatives but didn't have a parachute, besides the plane was an Airbus, not a Boeing, so the doors were closed. When we arrived in Frankfurt we had to pick up our checked in luggage, go through security again, then pack them what it seemed like a few kilometers, to the Condor airline check-in desk. Had some trouble checking in, but after a couple of hundred bucks paid to the airline we were checked in. The lady at the desk noticed that Rita was having some problems and called for a shuttle to take us to the boarding gate. Good thing, because the boarding gate was, and I'm not exenterating, about a kilometer from the check-in desk. When we were boarding the plane the attendant noticed that we had carryon bags. I have never heard of not being able to board a plane with carryon bags as part of the fare. Not on Condor. Had to pay another hundred bucks to board with the carryons. The seats on the Turkish Airline were quite spacious and comfortable, and the flight was only a couple of hours long. Not on Condor! We were given seats in the middle of the middle row. Rita was fine with shorter legs but I was uncomfortable with my knees rubbing against my ears. What's more, the lady in front of me leaned her seat back for the full 9 1/2 hour flight. In the whole row, she was the only one with the seat leaning. When we arrived poor Ken was there waiting for us. He said he had been there for 3 hours, just to be sure he wasn't late. What's more as he was parking he scrapped the side of his car against a post. Bad luck seemed to have followed us on the whole trip.