Killing Time on Long Train Journeys: 4 Excellent Tips

 Killing Time on Long Train Journeys: 4 Excellent Tips

Train journeys can be very frustrating. Unless you’ve prepared well, you’re usually stuck staring out of the window for hours, waiting to arrive at your destination. It’s even worse when there are delays! Fortunately, there are lots of ways to start enjoying your train journeys more. The trick is to realise that by not driving you're actually giving yourself some time. That time can be spent on work or play, but sitting and staring out of the window does not have to be your only option. Here are the best ways to kill time on even the longest of train journeys.

This car accident story takes up a whole blog post!

This is part two of yesterday's events. If you missed part one, you should read it first...

https://www.travelwithkevinandruth.com/2020/12/hiking-eye-doctor-and-fairly-major-car.html

So we're driving home from the eye doctor's appointment at around 6:30pm. It's dark out by this time, and I don't enjoy driving at night to begin with. And we had a bunch of tests done to our eyes, and they maybe haven't totally recovered. But, they are probably 95%. However, none of that had anything to do with the accident.

Hiking, eye doctor... and a fairly major car accident!

Well, what a day we had. As Ruth says, our life is never boring! But as you'll see, sometimes boring might actually be a bit better.

There is so much to tell you that I think we will break this into two blog posts!

Let's start at the beginning. As I explained in yesterday's blog post, I woke up feeling quite a bit better. Almost totally normal. And, we had been cooped up in the apartment for three full days. It was time to get outside and get some exercise.

We thought I had Covid

Slept well Sunday night, and woke up Monday morning ready to go for a hike and looking forward to our eye doctor appointments.

But it didn't take long to realize that something wasn't right. In the time frame of less than half an hour I went from feeling fine to running to the toilet. I had some kind of a stomach bug.

Another video of our new motorhome

We survived another two days of weekend quarantine and now have five days of freedom in front of us. But, we won't know what that five days is going to look like until we have our eye doctor appointments this afternoon. It could be that surgery happens fairly quickly. And we'll probably have to alternate somewhat who gets what done when to allow at least one of us to be able to drive and look after the other depending on how things go. We'll find out more later today.

And Christmas is coming up on Friday, but we're not sure how much that will affect things here in Turkey... a mostly Muslim country that doesn't typically celebrate Christmas, although we have seen some Christmas trees and things in some of the stores. From what I have read, this coming Friday could be a fairly normal work day here in Turkey.

Good news received yesterday, and some Kilimanjaro planning

Now into Sunday, day two of our weekend quarantine here in Turkey. The weekend quarantine is supposed to last through the New Year's Eve weekend which will actually be a four day lockdown lasting from 9am Thursday December 31st until 5am Monday January 4th.

Too bad, because it's been a beautiful weekend. But, we are doing our part to follow the rules. Fortunately, we can get out and about for the next five days. We feel bad for the locals who have to work for five days and then quarantine for two.

A new twist in our eye surgery story!

If you haven't read yesterday's post, you really need to do that before reading this one.

And so, given the events of Thursday, we had pretty much given up on getting the corrective eye surgery done while here in Turkey. But you never know when fate is going to change your direction in life. And so it was yesterday. What a strange story!

The eye doctor visit didn't go exactly as planned...

Yesterday morning we had our eye doctor appointments here in Antalya. 

Turkey is known as one of the cheaper places in the world to have corrective eye surgery performed. They even have a (normally) booming medical tourism industry related to that fact. But in trying to research it, I had a really difficult time coming up with actual prices. We figured that since we are already here, we would look into doing away with our glasses!

The ancient city of Termessos... possibly the best ruins site yet!

Only 30 kms (18 miles) from our apartment in Antalya is the ancient city of Termessos. But while Antalya is virtually at sea level, the city of Termessos was built in the mountains, 3,000' above.

I had done some research and seen some photos, and the site looked spectacular. Despite it being so close to Antalya, it is a fairly quiet ruins site because it's not accessible to the masses. Most people drive from the entrance gate to the parking area, and even then it is a fairly steep 1 km (.6 miles) hike to actually get to the ruins.

Moving day, and the ancient city of Olympos

We were out of the apartment in Finike at about 10:30am and headed for the big city of Antalya (pop 1,000,000). But we didn't want to arrive in Antalya until mid afternoon, so we planned to do some sightseeing along the way.

First, we headed towards the little village of Karaoz, with the thought of maybe doing some more Lycian Way hiking. But the weather was still not great and there was a 60% chance of rain. Besides, with all the rain we had three days prior to that, the trails would likely be pretty muddy.

It felt great to get outside again.

Our weekend curfew was over yesterday morning, but we woke up to more rain. The forecast called for a break in the showers after lunch, so as soon as that break occurred, we put on our raincoats and headed out the door!

I carry a set of exercise bands with me, and between pushups and other exercises I managed to get some activity in during our almost three days stuck in the apartment. But getting out for some fresh air and a fast paced walk really felt great. 

The credit card is getting a workout!

Pouring rain here all day yesterday. Not nice being cooped up due to the weekend quarantine here in Turkey, but it does make it a little more bearable knowing that we likely wouldn't have been outside anyhow. Man, did it pour buckets!

So, I spent a lot of time on the computer yesterday. 

We knew when we made the decision that a trip to Tanzania was going to be expensive. It's one of those countries where tourists pay far more than locals to do just about anything.

Why do they make things so difficult?

Seems that anything the government in any country touches, they make it difficult. It's either complicated... or it's confusing.

We need to have tourist visas in order to visit Tanzania. It's really just a money grab, because I haven't read of anybody being turned down for any reason. As Canadian citizens, we qualify for Visa on Arrival. It's a fairly simply system whereby you get off the plane and fill out some forms and maybe stand in lines for two hours while you get your visa processed. Then you pay your $50 USD, get your passport stamped, and away you go.

Appointment with the hospital

Not an emergency though... don't worry! Full story below.

Yesterday was an interesting day. We had to get a legal file printed off and mailed back to Canada. Just some stuff related to Ruth's father's estate. So we had to find somewhere to do that. I thought about a library, and a computer store, or an internet cafe but couldn't find any decent looking options using google maps in the town we are in. Guaranteed there would be somewhere, but instead we chose to drive a half an hour to the larger town of Kumluca.

Having lunch with the goats

Well I guess now that we have confirmed that we are going to climb Kilimanjaro, we need to stay in shape! Or hopefully get in better shape! 

We've been making an effort though... doing regular hiking and walking, and whenever possible involving some climbing. So yesterday we did a fairly short 1,200' climb to another ruins site. I know... you're probably getting tired of ruins sites.