Loose Ends

My leg!

 I am on my sofa just as I imagined I would be. The operation to repair my Achilles tendon went well and now I am on the mend. For the time being I hop round the house on one good leg - but not for long. The upside of this arrangement means that by lying down with my leg up, I have time to reminisce my holiday. I have lots of photos and having only shown them to two people so far, I have looked through them a few times by myself to recount the pleasures and there are so many pictures of Mosques with beautiful blue tiles. I like to think I spent my time soaking up memories rather than photographing everything I saw. 

I am turning into Mrs Misery over some behaviours I really don't understand. Top of the list is people taking selfies in front of anything and everything so that the actual building or object is obscured. On my trip to Prague, two girls were in a queue pouting and taking selfies while waiting for a rather grotty toilet. Why oh why? Then when I was in Prague, mostly women posed in front of statues, towers and churches for someone else to take multiple photos of them. I am not against personal photos per se, it is the quantity and repetition that irks. People on the bus took selfies too. Do they look at ALL of them?

While I am on my soap box, I have to mention bags. Suitcases, wheelies, rucksacks - all the types of bags we use for our holidays. Bigger bags mean you can take the kitchen sink along with you which might come in handy, but these bags need to be lifted onto trains, into buses and dragged onto the Metro. One lady dropped hers down an escalator  in Istanbul and the handle bent until it was all but useless. I try not to take more than I need on holiday and then not buy too much while away. However, there were a few things I regret not buying this time. I promised my son a camel but the humps would not have folded into my little soft-top wheelie. He got socks and my daughter got a silk scarf. I, too, have a few treasures to remember my trip by. I bought a picture of the Silk Road and a silk scarf for me. All this was quite manageable. I started with less than 14kg and I wasn't much heavier when I got home. 

I was much taken by some of the names I came across on my journey. In Istanbul there was Hotel Magnificent. That is a name to live up to and from the outside of the building, I feel it had a long way to go. In Athens there was Hando Massage - what else would you use? Also the VIP Cafe had seen far better days so I don't think many VIPs would venture there - it was all but derelict. I stayed in Ideal Hotel in Tashkent - again this had a few things that needed sorting to be truly Ideal - even though it wasn't bad. 

There are a few things that have made me chuckle. In Kyrgystan, the guards did a wonderful rendition for the Ministry of Silly Walks and then in Athens, the guards outside the presidential palace, wearing curly slippers with bobbles and retro uniforms outperformed the men from Kyrgystan with their high kicks. It made me consider what foreigners might think of our changing of the guard with their big bearskins. I think the slippers with the bobbles on takes the biscuit.

Kyrgystan guards on the move

Having suffered from diarrhoea and sickness for much of my trip, I am an expert on toilets. I got used to paying for the pleasure. The further west I travelled, the more expensive my visits became. In Brussels it cost 1.20 Euro to go to the toilet at the railway station. Having paid, I discovered it was disgusting. Yucky disgusting. Then even further west at St Pancras the toilets were spotless and free. I knew I was in the UK as it took three "sorry"s to negotiate my way out of the ladies'. 

And so, back on English soil, I walked to Euston, got on a train and was home in no time at all. Suddenly my holiday was over. Until the next adventure....

A big welcome home