Moving Day: San Francisco to Istanbul
Our last two days in San Francisco were spent getting ready to move. I checked our finances and confirmed our travel arrangements. We packed up the items we didn’t need for a while and mailed them to Tampa and New York. We donated jigsaw puzzles to the library and unneeded clothing to Goodwill, and ate up the leftovers in the refrigerator. We savored Dungeness crab sandwiches one last time at Woodhouse Fish Co.
On our last night, we went to see Samara Joy, one of our favorite jazz singers. We had previously seen Joy perform at Dizzy’s Club (with a trio), Newport Jazz Festival, and Carnegie Hall (with her own septet). This time, it was at Davies Symphony Hall with her septet and the San Francisco Orchestra! Joy introduced us to lesser known songs by jazz greats like Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn (Sunset and the Mocking Bird from the Queen’s Suite) and Billie Holiday (Left Alone). The concert was dazzling! The review in the SF Chronicle got it right.
We left San Francisco and flew to Istanbul via London. Our flights were mostly uneventful, but thanks to big airport delays it was nearly 24 hours later that we arrived at our hotel. The Orientbank Hotel was formerly the Deutsche Bank building, and appears in the film Skyfall at the start of James Bond’s epic chase through the Grand Bazaar. Despite the time change, we were weary enough to sleep through the night. The next morning, as if in reward for traveling 7,000 miles and. ten time zones, we were served a grand Turkish breakfast. It was a wonderful welcome to Istanbul!
