THe flight over was cramped and I had unpleasant seat mates.. but I quickly fell asleep. We got to IST around 3. We were booked on al ter flight to rome.. but There was a 5PM flight from IST to Rome. We witied in one line to see if we could go standbu on the eralier flight..w e got shittled from oen lien to another.. and they told us to run to the gate. The folks at the gate were super unhelpful and would not event talk to us about standby, even though seats were available.. ugh
THat left us with a 10 PM flight.. getting in at 11:20 to rome. too late for us to meet our driver and get to our airbnb in Abriuzzo.. (double ugh !)…
Istanbul is one of my favorite cites.. but it was too far to go into the city so we made the best of it by wandering aroudn the vey nice istanbull ariport for what ended up being about 6 hours. Again we camped in the very. very nice turkish air launge and ate some of the best travel food I’d ever eaten !!!! then visited stores, galleries and even the very cool archeological musem in the instanbull airport.
It was a small museum/. but it did a great job of using interactives.. like this statue with moving eyes
To make matters even worse.. our flight was delayed an extra one and a half hours for maintainance reasons. We finally boarted about 11pm
We got to Rome just after 1AM.. and walked to teh hotel that our agency had booked for us. Our dirver knew to pick us up there early the next morning. We’d already lost a day of vacation.. but we were in itlay !
We slept a couple of hours.. and woke up ON VACATION !
Our italy trip starts today,.. (or it was supposed to !).. Jen picked up linda, david, diane and me around noon and took us the the airport for our flight to Italy . Our plan was to fly form Burlington to Dulles, then an hour and a half later catch a flight to Rome.
That was the plan at last .. *sigh*..
We boarded the plane on time.. then just before taxing we got the news that there was a ground hold on all inbound flights to IAD.. no reason was given.. but the weather there was fine.. so it must have been staffing (grrrrrr) .. `15 min passed, then a half hour, then and hour.. and then we knew we wouldnt make our 5PMish rome connection. As soon as things started slippig I started workign on an alternative connection with united.. but no luck.. with the groudn hold .. so may folks flights were disrupted that all the outbound conenctiosn got messed up too. ALl the flights to rome or anywhere close were already full. United automatically rebooked us on a flight the next day or the day after (!).. no way we were doing that. I managed to grab the last 4 seats on a Turkish air flight to room with a stop over in Istanbul paying full cost.. that left at 10:45 pm…Eventually I got United to pay for those flights and refunded… so we hunkered down in the very delicious Turkish air lounge and waited for that much later flight ..
So.. we got aboard that flight.. none of us sitting together.. none of us with the better seats I’d used points to procure.. but at least we were on our way..
That was the plan at last .. *sigh*..
We boarded the plane on time.. then just before taxing we got the news that there was a ground hold on all inbound flights to IAD.. no reason was given.. but the weather there was fine.. so it must have been staffing (grrrrrr) .. `15 min passed, then a half hour, then and hour.. and then we knew we wouldnt make our 5PMish rome connection. As soon as things started slippig I started workign on an alternative connection with united.. but no luck.. with the groudn hold .. so may folks flights were disrupted that all the outbound conenctiosn got messed up too. ALl the flights to rome or anywhere close were already full. United automatically rebooked us on a flight the next day or the day after (!).. no way we were doing that. I managed to grab the last 4 seats on a Turkish air flight to room with a stop over in Istanbul paying full cost.. that left at 10:45 pm…Eventually I got United to pay for those flights and refunded… so we hunkered down in the very delicious Turkish air lounge and waited for that much later flight ..
So.. we got aboard that flight.. none of us sitting together.. none of us with the better seats I’d used points to procure.. but at least we were on our way..
That was the plan at last .. *sigh*..
We boarded the plane on time.. then just before taxing we got the news that there was a ground hold on all inbound flights to IAD.. no reason was given.. but the weather there was fine.. so it must have been staffing (grrrrrr) .. `15 min passed, then a half hour, then and hour.. and then we knew we wouldnt make our 5PMish rome connection. As soon as things started slippig I started workign on an alternative connection with united.. but no luck.. with the groudn hold .. so may folks flights were disrupted that all the outbound conenctiosn got messed up too. ALl the flights to rome or anywhere close were already full. United automatically rebooked us on a flight the next day or the day after (!).. no way we were doing that. I managed to grab the last 4 seats on a Turkish air flight to room with a stop over in Istanbul paying full cost.. that left at 10:45 pm…Eventually I got United to pay for those flights and refunded… so we hunkered down in the very delicious Turkish air lounge and waited for that much later flight ..
So.. we got aboard that flight.. none of us sitting together.. none of us with the better seats I’d used points to procure.. but at least we were on our way..
We leave tomorrow for italy.l. spent the day cleaning up from all the prep we’ve been doing on the house. MId morning my cousin’s Mark and Kathy came by the house. They were in town for a freinds daugheters wedding. 41 years ago Mark showed up at our house and introduced himself as my cousin.. His grandmother Keenie was my great great aunt (she’s top left in this picture alonmg with my two other great aunts gussie and freydie.. amd my grandmother in the bottom left.. not sure wh that is in the upper right).
She’s second from left in bottom row here.. my sister and grandmotehr in teh upper left.
We had a good time marveling at how liong we’ve known each other.. we went to their wedding.
They came to ours (editors mnopte.. I was just trying to find a picture of them at our wedding and ended up spending a half hour looking at our wedding pictures.. got so wrappewd up in them I forgot what I was doing.. so great looking at those pics with all that family.. I realllllly love diane 🙂
Anyway.. very glad to see mark and kathy
Great catching up !
Later on in the day.. Linda and david showed up. THey drove up to vermont so that we could start the Italy trip together . We’re leaving tomorrow and are so excited !
Ran around like crazy today prepping for our next trip (my third in a month).. which includes the last prep days before max and becky’s visit.. So much good stuff in such a short time !
I did take a moemnet to get the car washed.. I love going through the machine .. a few moments of peace
