Sochi, day 2

I sleep another 12 hours, until 8. We had to vacate the apartment at 10 so I got up and warmed up the rest of my pizza and had the rest of a Sprite. That sounds like a typical American breakfast. The other two were out until about 1, so they slept a little longer. We got everything cleaned up and packed for the landlady to check us out a 10. We headed back to the train station to deposit our luggage again. This time we went on foot. Since we walked right by the Turkish Airlines office. We went in to check that our online check-in was successful and that we had seats. Everything was OK so on to the train station.
We deposited our luggage and headed down towards the cable cars and, of course, it started to sprinkle. But we weren’t going to let that stop us. We got the bus to the cable car station, go to get in line...and it’s closed because of high winds! Oh, crap. But other people were waiting also so we decided not to move from the line. After about 10 minutes, we got to ride to the top of the Dendrarium. It’s a beautiful arboretum. When we got to the top we got out and took pictures from the tower and, Leo and behold, the sun even started to shine. I needed sunglasses.
After our picture-taking, we paid the entrance fee for the park and walked back down the hill. It is a very lovely park with all sorts of flowers and trees, little bridges, water falls, and statues. The walk was great and it was so warm I even had to take off my coat. I haven’t been able to go out without a coat since the end of October. While we were sitting in the park, we called the Dolpinarium to see when the shows started because we really wanted to catch one of them. It turned out there was one at 4 p.m. which was perfect for us, so we walked down to the road to catch a bus back into town. (In the little buses, people pay when the get OFF the bus!)
We got off at Riviera Park, the amusement park where the Dolphinarium is, and de die to get some lunch first. I saw a restaurant called Sinbad’s which was serving a “business lunch” for about $5. We decided to try it. This place was gorgeous. The cook was a Syrian who had lived in Beirut, the tables had couches next to the, to sit on instead of chairs and the decor was marvelous. We all went for the business lunch. It consisted of soup, a salad and the main course of a beef-green bean goulash served
with rice. They served all 3 courses to us at one time! But it all tasted to good. And the waitress treated us all to a piece of baklava for dessert. I washed it all down with green tea. We were stuffed.
We left the restaurant and walked across the road to Riviera Park. We bought the tickets to the show right away and then walked around the park. Fouad tried out a Dr. Fish spa. He inserted his feet into a fish tank for 5 minutes and let the fish chew the dead skin off his legs. After the first few seconds of being weirded out, he loved it.
We ambled over to the dolphin show and took our seats. It was actually pretty spectacular. The animals were extremely well-trained animals and the performance was really entertaining. But now that it 5 and the show was over, we still had time to kill before we had to pick up our luggage by midnight and then head to the airport for our 4 a.m. flight. So we de died to take the bus out to the big mall and hang around at the food court. Which we did, BUT  the mall closed at 10 and we had to get the last bUs before then. So at 9:15 we hopped on the bus back to the train station and walked over to the little restaurant that Sonia and Fouad had gone out to last night while I slept. It was a nice place and we sat out on the covered patio with lots of stray cats running around. We had the same waitress they had had the night before and she was so excited because I was the American she had ever talked to. She spoke very nice English and was very, very pleasant. We hung out there until 11:30 and then walked back to the train station, picked up the luggage before that office closed, and called a taxi.
The ride to the airport was long, all the way out by where the Olympic Games were held. It’s a beautiful, big, and very new-looking airport. Of course the counter wasn’t  open yet, so we sat down and charged our electronic equipment. At 1 a.m. we signed in and went through security. Fouad and I had trouble getting through passport control because the guys’ computers weren’t working right. Fouad’s guy  even came out of his booth and came after him, asking him again where he was going in why.
We were supposed to board at 3:40. We tried sleeping and texting, but it certainly wasn’t  very restful.  3:40 came and went. 4 a.m. came and went. We should have taken off then and that certainly wasn’t going to happen. We finally boarded at about 4:30. I was able to sleep on the plane again, but it definitely wasn’t enough.