Our first couple of days in Kathmandu have been more about getting our bearings with our new neighborhood and establishing ourselves in our new home. Sandy spent time cleaning our apartment to her standards and we went grocery shopping. The supermarket is across the street from our apartment and is very well stocked. They were in the process of restocking shelves so it was a bit of an obstacle course. For lunch, we made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches at the apartment. Our building has a fitness room with some weights and cardio machines – we went down and got a workout in. Coming back up, we used the stairs instead of the elevator. We misinterpreted the way the floors were labeled and we spent at least ten minutes trying to get into the apartment on the sixth floor that is right above our apartment on the fifth floor. In our defense, the halls and doors are the same on every floor. It made us laugh when we realized our error and we are glad nobody was home, thinking we were trying to break in. We had been craving mashed potatoes at KFC and there is one by the supermarket. We were sad to learn that, like in Mongolia, they did not have mashed potatoes – we had some chicken and fries and then we stopped at a small café by the apartment and Sandy had vegetable soup while I had a large fresh fruit salad.

We are very excited because our first visitor from home arrived today (Saturday), so Friday was more preparation and getting established in our new home. We talked through some ideas for the itinerary while Sarah is here. I wanted to get the eSim card for my phone yesterday and the store was about a 30-minute walk. We arrived and learned that we needed my passport, not just a copy and so we walked back to the apartment to get it and then returned. Nice to have that detail sorted and it was very inexpensive to cover us for our first month in Nepal. As we walked past the Narayanhiti Royal Palace, there was a demonstration with around 30 people apparently in support of the king. Nepal no longer has a monarchy so we weren’t exactly sure what they were supporting – possibly a protest against investigation into the Royal Massacre back in 2001 (a story for another day) or maybe they want to return to a monarchy. After we had the eSim worked out, we walked the Durbar Marg a little, which is Kathmandu’s main boulevard and found a great sushi restaurant called Koto. We enjoyed sushi rolls, Everest and Gorkha beers, which are local to Nepal. On the walk home, we enjoyed chocolate ice cream cones and picked up a few more groceries.

Today, Sarah arrives!! We took a taxi using the Pathao app to the airport.  Here, if you want to wait inside, you buy a ticket for around $1, which we did. It was pretty crowded outside and we wanted to make sure we saw Sarah when she came down from arrivals. She came down around 11am after her 24-hour trip from Minneapolis. We taxied back to the apartment and got her settled and then headed out for a fairly relaxing afternoon hoping to help her adjust to the time change as quick as possible. First stop was the Garden of Dreams. This is a beautiful garden area in the center of the city that was built in the 1920s by a Nepalese man and went into disrepair upon his death in the 1960s. It was recently refurbished and opened to the public for a small entry fee with the help of the Austrian government.

We walked around the city a little after the park and landed at Nepal Micropub where we had delicious red ales and also Kolsch along with chicken sandwiches and I had smoked chicken with a sauce called Akhabare and Timmur. It was all good and the sauce was very spicy – set my tongue on fire for a little bit.

We then walked back to the apartment and Sarah, unsurprisingly, headed to bed early while Sandy stayed up a little longer. I then watched Florida Stata lose another game. At around 12:30am, some kind of argument broke out in one of the apartments on our floor and it was very loud and unsettling. It finally settled down after about an hour and we went back to sleep.