Travel

After Being Mugged In The Park, My Credit Card Company Did It Again

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A colorful canopy of parasols over an alley way in Balat, Istanbul Turkey.

Most of you probably read my account of getting drugged and robbed in Istanbul.

However I haven’t reported the mugging I got from one of my credit card issuers in the aftermath.

Typical scene in the quiet backstreets of Balat, Istanbul, Turkey.

While the drugging and robbery were over in an afternoon on July 2, the mugging by the bank occurred during the ensuing nine weeks as I tried to show that I was truly the victim of a crime and should have the fraudulent charges on my stolen credit card removed.

Just hope something like this never happens to you.

(Note: I’ve inserted some random photos of my recent three-month stay in Turkey that I haven’t shared yet, just to lighten the mood and show Turkey in a different, better light than what might be inferred from what happened to me in a single incident. Otherwise the photos are not specifically relevant to the post.)

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Another Wonderful Gift of Music, This Time in Tbilisi!

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tbilisi symphony orcehstra
Tbilisi Symphony Orchestra conductor David Mukeria takes the stage for Friday’s performance.

“Without music, life would be a mistake,” said German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche.

I surely agree. A life-long love of music has played an important part in my post-retirement travel life, providing many new, wonderful opportunities to hear and see live musical performances throughout the world that I would never have had without it.

Many of my most memorable travel experiences have involved music.

From the mad rock sounds of the French band The Inspector Cluzo in Peru; Gregorian chant in an 11th century cathedral in Berlin; impromptu jams by indigenous musicians in Iquitos on the Amazon River; the Amazon Symphony Orchestra itself playing Hayden and Strauss in Manaus, Brazil; to most recently discovering the incredible polyphonic voices at Tbilisi, Georgia’s Holy Trinity Cathedral, and many more, I’ve thoroughly enjoyed a grand variety of world music along my journey.

This week I was looking online for more live music in Tbilisi and discovered to my delight that the internationally renowned Tbilisi Symphony Orchestra was performing this week at the Kakhidze theater, just a six-minute walk from where I live!

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‘Chronicle of Georgia’: The Best, Least Visited Tour Site in Tbilisi

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Get a feel for the scale of the monument by looking at the benches and the couple on the steps.

Yesterday my friend had the urge at 7:30 a.m. to visit the Chronicle of Georgia, a colossal monument designed by world-renowned contemporary artist Zurab Tsereteli.

My friend roused me from a filmy sleep with a ping on Whatsapp asking if I wanted to join her. She needed to start early because of an online English class she taught in the early afternoon.

I had the monument on my list of places to see in Tbilisi so I agreed to meet her in an hour at the Marshanavili Metro Station.

The monument turned out to be well worth getting up for.

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Thinking About Georgia? Consider These 10 Oddities Before You Go

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My first week in Georgia was spent in an outlying neighborhood of Tbilisi, Georgia’s capital city.

Many inviting, well-maintained parks are spread throughout the City of Tbilisi, such as this one nearly filled with Impatiens in the colors and design of the Georgian flag behind the Tumanishvilii Theatre.

Knowing little about my latest destination, I booked a hotel room in a section of the city called Isani.

My plan was to stay wherever this hotel was, while learning a little more about Tbilisi, this city of a little more than a million people, then rent an apartment I could actually inspect first to reside in for the next three months.

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Gone From Istanbul, Been to Barcelona, Now I’m in Georgia

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One of my favorite activities in Istanbul, Turkey, was riding the ferries across the Bosphorus and Golden Horn to visit the many different parts of this large and captivating city.

It’s been too long since I last posted. I was in Turkey at the time, which was two countries ago on my continuing journey.

For the past 11 days I’ve been in Georgia — the country, not the state — and before that I spent a week in Barcelona, Spain, where I visited a friend who I first met in 2017 in Medellin, Colombia.

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Change On The Road: Has Travel Affected Your Life?

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“Travel is more than the seeing of sights; it is a change that goes on, deep and permanent, in the ideas of living.”

– Miriam Beard, American author, traveler, born in England (1901-1983)

An important part of the book I want to write about travel involves change. Here’s the beginning of an examination of the phenomenon that’s affected travelers since the first time someone wondered what lies beyond the distant horizon, and went off to find out.

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The View From Istanbul’s Galata Tower

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A view from the Galata Tower across the Golden Horn

The weather is dreary this Monday in Istanbul. Gray skies since early morning persist, and post-lunch raindrops have begun speckling the windows of my apartment by the park on the Golden Horn. The air is damp and cool for such a late-spring day.

This is in contrast to Sunday’s brilliance, just yesterday when the sun reigned in the glory of a regal blue sky, shedding warmth across the city.

Yesterday was perfect for a walk from my apartment in humble, colorful Balat in Fatih, across the Golden Horn waterway on the Galata Bridge, to historic Galata Tower in the bustling tourist area of Beyoglu. It’s an easy, interesting walk of about two miles.

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