25 Hours

After a very relaxing weekend at home (read that: a weekend during which I did absolutely nothing but binge watch NCIS), I was ready to pack up and head back to Abu Dhabi. I'd spent a couple days gathering things to pack and running last minute errands. Here are my packed bags, waiting by the door:

I might have a favorite color.

At 2:30 in the afternoon, L.A. time, I called an Uber. It was 1:30 in the morning, in Abu Dhabi. Inexplicably, the vehicle that arrived to pick me up was a Toyota Tacoma. I've never had a pickup truck as an Uber before. But the driver was very nice.

I arrived at the airport and checked my duffle bag. I proceeded through security with my backpack and my rolling bag. I had a change of clothes and all our refill medications packed in the rolling bag. With all my vitamins, this amounts to quite a few bottles, as you can see:

My flight to Abu Dhabi was the same one we took several weeks ago, with the tight connection in Istanbul. I kept an anxious eye on the clock, hoping that my departure would not be delayed. Soon enough, it was time to go! I made my way to the gate, boarded, and got settled in.

Still watching the clock, I had a new worry when a young couple, with an infant, settled in across the aisle from me. The baby was so little that he wasn't yet holding up his head. I could only hope he would sleep through the flight. Ultimately, the couple swapped places with other passengers so they could sit in seats that had an attachment for a bassinet. As far as I could tell from this new location, the baby did sleep through most of the flight.

We took off a few minutes after our scheduled time. But at this point, all I could do was hope for the best. Dinner began with nuts and a small selection of appetizers:

The second course was appetizers I selected from a cart - soup, artichokes, eggplant, watermelon and cheese. The soup was really good. There were a number of other things on the cart, but I didn't want to ask for everything.

For my main, I had selected the beef option. It was dry enough that I actually smeared some of the butter from my bread plate onto it, but after the butter melted in, it was perfectly fine.

For dessert, I opted for the cheese plate, as I typically do because I'm never sure of the ingredients.

Dinner service took a long time, but I read my book and watched a couple television shows. After dinner, I went to sleep.

I slept for about four hours before waking up. I didn't feel great when I woke up, but I figured I was still fighting the touch of a stomach bug from the weekend. I drank some water and went back to sleep. When I woke up another four hours later, I knew I had a migraine.

With just over two hours left, they began serving breakfast. We had filled out cards selecting our breakfast at the beginning of the flight. Breakfast began with this fruit platter:

But after nibbling on a slice of kiwi, I knew that food wasn't going to be an option. With so little time left in the flight and a tight connection in Istanbul, I couldn't risk taking a migraine pill. Instead, I asked the flight attendant to take my tray away and I curled back up with both my sweatshirt and my blanket covering my eyes. I did fall asleep again, which is unusual for me.

During the last thirty minutes of the flight, I packed up absolutely everything I had out. Usually, I will keep my kindle and a few other things to entertain myself with during landing. But I didn't want to risk leaving anything and I knew my migraine was making things fuzzy. With the headache, I couldn't read anyway.

We landed in Istanbul just ten minutes late. This left me with an hour to make my connection. I was feeling reasonably good about this timeline. But I'd forgotten that we would not taxi to a gate, but to a bus. I got off the plane and onto the bus. At the bus gate, I got off the bus to hear a uniformed employee shouting for "Abu Dhabi passengers".

I skewed out of the crowd over to him. He told me to get back on the bus. I waited until everyone had exited and climbed back onto the bus. He got on with me. We were the only people in the bus. He said something about the Abu Dhabi gate being on the other side of the airport.

The bus drove us around to another gate. I got off, following the employee into the building. We surprised the man working at that gate; he clearly wasn't expecting anyone to enter. The employee I was following shouted something at him that included "Abu Dhabi" and we walked past.

Up two escalators and through several hallways, he deposited me at my gate. The sign was flashing "last call". There were perhaps six people waiting ahead of me to have their boarding passes scanned. Outside, a bus was completely full with another handful of people standing outside the bus. By the time my passport was checked and my boarding pass scanned, that bus had left and the few of us were boarding another bus. We waited for several minutes, but only three more passengers came after me - all of them were out of breath from running.

The bus took us out to our airplane. I boarded and found my seat. Business class on this flight was only about half full. I got a glass of water and took my migraine pill. I'd told Craig my plan. I hoped the five hour flight would be long enough that I could function again by the time I needed to go through customs.

I curled up with the sleeve of my sweatshirt pulled over my eyes. A flight attendant took my water glass and threw a blanket over me. After we took off, another flight attendant tried to show me the menu. I just shook my head at her; the migraine pill was in full effect.

She suggested I move to another seat, "away from the baby," if I wanted to sleep. I groggily agreed and she moved me back two rows, as far from the toddler on this flight as possible. As a bonus, I got two extra pillows because I'd taken the pillows from my row. I curled up and dozed through the entire flight. I can't say that I slept, because I kept starting awake and I frequently had to change position.

With about thirty-five minutes left in the flight, I finally woke up. One of the flight attendants came back and asked me if he could get me anything. I remember staring blankly at him, trying to figure out what exactly he was offering. Finally, I asked for some water so he would go away.

Getting off the plane was a bit of a challenge. Once more, I had to make my way down a set of stairs to a waiting bus. My migraine pill made the stairs even more of a challenge than the full blown migraine had done. But I managed and found my way to passport control.

I'd forgotten to ask Craig which line I was supposed to pick and I only vaguely remembered coming in last time, sick from Istanbul. Naturally, I picked the wrong line. I should have gone through e-gates, but instead went through the normal line. By the time I realized my mistake, the line for e-gates was longer than my current position in the other line.

I knew Craig was waiting for me, which did not make me any more patient. Queue management was sketchy, with security opening new lanes all the time and funneling the waiting people into those lines. It was frustrating, but I kept an eye on the e-gates line. While I'm certain I would have gotten through there quicker if I'd made that choice from the start, I'm also fairly confident that by the time I'd gone back I would have finished at about the same time.

Regardless, I still needed to get my bag. And, as it turned out, that was an even longer wait that passport control had been. I waited at the baggage carousel for over thirty minutes, until the slow trickle of bags stopped. At that point, I had to return to the baggage desk to fill out a form. I was told that my bag was still in Istanbul (no great surprise). It would come on the same flight the following day and they would deliver it to my hotel.

By now, it was 2:00 in the morning. When Craig paid for parking, we discovered that he had been at the airport for over two hours. By the time we got back to the hotel, it was 2:30, a full twenty-five hours since I left the house in Los Angeles.

The next day, my much traveled, extra tagged bag arrived at our hotel:

One Long Day

My flight was schedule to leave Abu Dhabi at 1 am on Saturday. Because it was an international flight to Istanbul, Craig and I left for the airport at 10:30 pm on Friday. We got to the airport at 11 pm and Craig helped me to get checked in. It was very hard to leave him to go through security. Even excited about the road trip with Court and the girls, it was painful to leave.

I'm used to Craig leaving for work travel. And I've traveled without him several times. But usually, I am flying with him or to him. I'm sure the time of day didn't help to make it easier.

My flight was delayed by nearly half an hour. The delay combined with a lack of signs and the gate change for another flight to make me nervous that I was standing in the wrong place. And boarding, as had been my experience with this airline, was a real adventure. They made no effort to control the habit people have, the world over, of standing up the minute that boarding starts and crowding to the entrance despite their assigned spot in the boarding order. In fact, I think that the people who will board last are always the first to crowd up to the gate, impeding the boarding of every other person.

The flight to Istanbul was about five hours long. I was trying to stay awake on this flight, despite the fact that it was the middle of the night, local time. I wanted to get back onto California time as quickly as possible. The flight began with a light meal:

Regardless of my efforts to stay awake, I ended up sleeping for about two hours. I woke up to this offering:

I rarely enjoy eggs when I'm not at home. And eggs made in flight are the worst. So I got off the plane in Istanbul, tired and hungry.

I had a 7.5 hour layover in Istanbul. On the one hand, this great given our trouble making a connection in Istanbul on our flight out. On the other hand, SEVEN AND A HALF HOURS!  I didn't qualify for a sleeping room in the Turkish Airlines lounge because your layover must be more than four but less than seven hours. You also have to be connecting between international flights, with at least one flight being over eight hours. After reading some reviews online, I began to wonder how many sleeping rooms this enormous lounge even has.

I was able to find a locker to secure my suitcase and laptop, so I was only carrying my phone and kindle. In the seven hours that I paced the lounge, I decided that they have devoted an equal amount of space to the sleeping rooms as the shower rooms. This means they have very few rooms, which explains the crazy rules governing them.

Perhaps because I wasn't sick during this visit, I was able to find some food options that I enjoyed. My favorites were this cheese filled flat bread and the lentil soup (which I had enjoyed on our first trip through). I lost count of how many times I got one or the other of these two things. It was, after all, seven hours!

At one point, I did manage to doze for about 45 minutes. But I was soon awoken by a businessman who decided he needed to sit on the sofa opposite me and conduct a loud phone call on his speaker phone.

About half an hour before my boarding time, I glanced up at the board in the lounge that displayed gates for flights to see if the gate had been assigned yet. It had, and there was also a flashing "go to gate" next to my flight. I decided I would do that, even though it seemed early.

It was a long walk to my gate, but I did not make any wrong turns. Maybe I am starting to get familiar with this airport, against my better judgment. At the gate, I encountered a passport check that could not have been further from the passport check in this same airport when we were traveling in the other direction.

For our flight to Abu Dhabi, there was no real announcement that our passports would be checked. Craig and I just happened to find ourselves in a line when we were trying to find a place to stand (because all seating was filled).

But for this flight to Los Angeles, the passport check was essentially a second security check. First, I made my way through a winding queue. At three points in this queue, a person checked my passport and ticket. I must have been early, because I was the only person in this queue, making it all the more unusual. Each person checked something and wrote something different on my boarding pass.

Once through there, I was directed into another queue, where I walked to a table and set all my bags on the table. They asked me to remove my shoes, empty my pockets, and stand with my arms out. One person swiped my hands, my arms, my shoe laces, and the inside of my shoes and walked away. Two other people went through my bags, removing my kindle and laptop. They asked me to remove the cover from my kindle and they swiped everything, from the inside of my bag to my keyboard to my kindle case. One of the pair took those samples away. No one actually ever told me I was clear to continue, I just moved on after putting everything back together.

At the gate, which was a bus gate, I overheard some people who were confused about why we had been told to come to the gate so early. I can't imagine how anyone going through that level of security would think that the number of people expected on our flight would go through there quickly. It wasn't long before we started boarding - though this meant that we boarded a bus, drove out to the airplane, and walked up steps to board the plane.

I found my seat and settled in for the fourteen hour flight home. For some reason, I failed to take pictures of my meals on this flight. I actually watched a movie. Or rather, I rewatched a movie that I've seen before - Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. After eating dinner, I managed to sleep for about eight hours. I woke up with enough time to finish my movie before breakfast was served.

Global Entry took me through LAX quickly. I caught an Uber home. I'd declined several offers for a ride home. I'm glad I did, as I'm sure that I was not entirely coherent by this point. I arrived home at 6:35 pm, California time. That's 5:35 am in Abu Dhabi. I think that's 31 hours, door to door.

Istanbul (Craig's perspective)

[A guest post from Craig]

I’ve wanted to go to Istanbul for a long time. First, because of the They Might Be Giants song, “Istanbul, not Constantinople” and then, much later, because I read about the Blue Mosque (Sultan Ahmed Mosque) and the Hagia Sophia. Even later, I read a great fictional book, “The Historian” (a realistic vampire novel that is a slow burn but worth reading) that takes place in more than one section in the Hagia Sophia and Istanbul. This wouldn’t be the first time a fictional novel lured me to far off destinations.

So what started as a sh*t show turned into a pleasant surprise of sorts when we missed our connection to Abu Dhabi in Istanbul. I’ll report, it wasn’t our fault. Our Turkish Airlines flight out of LAX was delayed without explanation. We had a 70-minute connection. By the time we got off the bus that took us from our plane to the terminal, we had ten minutes to make our connection. We didn’t.

After many queues and waiting and shuffling around to and fro we were given vouchers to stay at a nice airport hotel and three meals (as there is only one flight a day from Istanbul to Abu Dhabi). We ate a (very) late dinner and crashed, but the next day realized we had about eight hours to kill before we had to go to the airport and so we decided to see the Blue Mosque and Hagia Sophia before we had to make our connection.

Less than 30 minutes away, we cabbed to the old part of Istanbul. It was lightly raining and we made our way through narrow street markets, past touristy souvenir shops, countless rug dealers, perfume and incense shops, and other trinket purveyors. We rounded a tight corner, went up a flight of steps and were standing at the Blue Mosque.

We had read it was closed but to prayers for renovation, so we looked at it from outside, missing the “blue” part of the mosque. Still, what an architectural marvel! The mosque was huge.

I had no idea that the Blue Mosque and Hagia Sophia were, essentially, mirrored by a huge park and grounds, but they are, the Christian structure and the mosque anchoring the two sides of the park. That’s more explanation for their significance than I knew. I had known Istanbul to be a mash-up of Christians and Muslims, which made it unique, but I didn’t know it all sort of became symbolic in that spot.

We went over to Hagia Sophia, were accosted by “guides” (they really only want to direct you to their rug store) and went to tour the ancient and magnificent cathedral that, in the 1800s, had been converted to a mosque and back again. The structure dates to about 500, as I recall. We spent a good amount of time walking around throughout, the gold mosaics being a highlight.

After, we went to do a little shopping in the narrow street markets (almost a souk, but not quite) and it began to pour rain in a deluge. We huddled under the awning of a closed store (it was still late morning on a weekday in March, so many shops weren’t open yet) waiting for it to let up, but it didn’t, really. So we made our way to grab a taxi and headed back to our hotel.

I can’t say we have “done Istanbul” after that, but I do feel like we’ve gotten the highlights done. An unexpected bucket list item: done.

Adventures in Istanbul (part 2)

The beds in our hotel room were exceptionally small. Slightly wider than a twin bed, but not even so wide as a double bed. Regardless, we started the night in one bed. To add to the challenge, I stacked all but one pillow up to make a tower so that I could sleep mostly sitting up. As I've mentioned, the cold/flu was finally catching up to me.

Halfway through the night, I woke up with my left ear and left sinuses throbbing. I'd turned onto that side in my sleep, as I tend to do. I was also extremely warm, so I abandoned the bed I was sharing with Craig and settled into the other one. Once again, I made a tower of pillows. But this time, I curled up more on my right side, hoping to reduce the pressure on my left side. As you might expect, when I woke up it was my right side that was hurting.

We showered and dressed to get breakfast. At some point in this process, I thought I might try to pop my ears to ease the pressure in them. This did not go as planned. My right ear popped and made another sound I've not heard before. Instead of relief from the pressure, I got a stabbing pain so great that I curled up on the bed and sobbed for a few minutes. After a few minutes, it eased enough that I was able to get up and get ready for the day.

After a buffet breakfast, we went out to visit the Blue Mosque and the Hagia Sophia Museum. We also visited a shopping street, where we hid under awning to avoid the sudden rain. I'll post Craig's account of our adventures after this post.

By the end of our time out, I was dragging. Jet-lag combined with the sinus issues in the most unpleasant way. To make things more interesting, my right ear was still hurting and, at some point during the day, had started leaking a clear fluid. I was not looking forward to the flight that night, but there wasn't much of a choice.

We got back to the hotel for a late lunch. There we were offered the remnants of the breakfast buffet as a "special treat" or the same menu we'd had the night before. Craig got the chicken again, but with a different soup. I had some soup and a few bites from the buffet. By this point, I was feeling so unwell that I nearly went back to the room while Craig was still eating.

When we returned to the room, I spent the afternoon alternating between hot steamy showers and soaking in the tub. The steam and heat cleared my congestion a bit and made me feel like I might survive the rest of the trip. Craig sat by the window and tried to stay awake. If nothing else, this day in Istanbul did help us adjust to the time.

Our check out was set three hours before our flight. We decided to check out four hours earlier and head to the airport, given our struggles navigating the airport the night before. In the lobby, we waited for a bit with some others waiting for the shuttle before we decided to simply take a taxi.

At the Istanbul airport, we had to pass through two different security checks. At the first, we were able to leave everything in our bags, but once through the scanner they wanted us to open and turn on all our laptops. My game laptop was not happy with this - it's a Windows machine that had been shut down completely for our travels. It's also enormous, as I've mentioned previously, so they were not inclined to let us go through until I got it powered up.

After some wandering through the ticketing area, we found a second security that was more like what we expected. We took everything out of our bags, but we didn't have to turn anything on. We made our way back to the lounge, which was the one thing we were able to easily find in this airport.

There, we sampled a wide variety of foods. Finding nothing to our liking, we abandoned our table so it wouldn't be obvious how many different things we had tried and rejected. We ultimately wound up on a couple of sofas. At some point, I could no longer stay awake and fell asleep on the sofa. Craig also fell asleep, so it's only luck that we woke up in time for our flight.

I was very disoriented from falling asleep like that. Normally, I cannot sleep in open, public places. And it certainly wasn't a comfortable position that I'd found. We made our way through the airport to our gate. I blame the wayfinding for how long it took us to get there, though we were hitting a point in our travels that some of the fault might have been ours.

At the gate, we encountered a new variety of disorganized boarding. Without any announcement, you were somehow supposed to know that you needed to get your passport checked and your boarding pass marked. The line for this was basically the same as the people standing around the gate waiting for a plane. I'm not even sure how we ended up in this line, as there was certainly no reason for us to be there.

After a long wait, we saw a bus pull up outside our "gate". The bus driver was having a real struggle, to judge by the number of times the bus moved forward and back, repositioning itself alongside the curb. Only then did the staff announce that they needed to check passports, if you hadn't done so already. Because there was no space for a line, with everyone waiting, the employees started making their way through the passengers to check passports. But for some reason, they didn't take the stamp with them, so they would check the passport and take the boarding pass back to the desk to stamp it before returning it to the passenger. We watched all of this with some bemusement.

Eventually, we got on the bus and made our way to the plane. On this flight, I decided to watch a movie. I watched "Only the Brave" - it was really good, but I cried most of the way through it. Craig was also watching it, but he had started on an earlier flight so he was a bit ahead of me.

I had been very worried about taking off, because of the issues I was having with my ear. But that wasn't the bad part of this flight. If anything, my ear improved slightly when we got in the air. But landing. Landing was very, very bad. I couldn't do anything that helped my right ear. It became so painful that I was basically just curled up in my seat sobbing. So that was super fun.

Once we got on the ground, the pain leveled off to a somewhat tolerable level. We passed through passport control with only a little confusion. The new electronic system wouldn't let me through so I had to go through another line and find Craig on the other side. We think it's because I haven't been to the UAE since they switched to this system.

Passport control dumped us directly into the baggage claim. We waited a bit, but all four of our bags made the transfer from Istanbul. With our five bags, we made our way to the car rental desk. Craig had rented a car for this trip. The first car we were offered smelled like someone had smoked in it, with an air freshener over the smoke smell. Craig just wanted them to note this, so we weren't charged for smoking in the car. Neither of us smoke, so that would have been very frustrating. Instead, we ended up with a different car. This meant removing all our bags from our first car and putting them into a second.

At this point, it was nearly 2 am, local time. Istanbul is only an hour different, so we had been awake for 18 hours or so. We navigated out of the airport and into Abu Dhabi. We arrived at our hotel location to find, well, an empty lot near a mall. Craig called the airport and we discovered we were not even close to where we were supposed to be.

For whatever reason, the hotel told us to put the Al Wahda Mall in our GPS. The receptionist even spelled the name of the mall for us. A short time later, we found the mall but the hotel was not in evidence. After a bit of driving about - thankfully, the streets were deserted at this time of night so there was no one to mind that we were changing lanes erratically and making turns at random - I spotted the Marriott logo way up on the top of a building.  Craig couldn't see it from his seat, but he trusted me and we made our way there. Thankfully, it was the right building. The building sits catty-corner from the Al Wahda Mall.

We had a slight adventure finding the entrance because we are staying in a serviced apartment at the hotel, which has a different entrance that wasn't open that late at night. We had to check in at the hotel and make our way back to the apartment. But I was very relieved to get into our apartment and crash for a few hours.

Adventures in Istanbul (part 1)

To begin our adventures in Istanbul, we first had to find a way out of the airport. This proved to be an adventure all of its own. Apparently, no one goes from the lounge to the customs/passport control exit. Nor does anyone come in through security just to turn around and leave. From our landmarks, there were no signs pointing the way. Instead, we followed the directions of several different people to arrive at a dead end. The first time, we took the elevator downstairs and found ourselves at the entrance to another airline lounge. We went back upstairs, wondered around a bit, and got new directions. From that same dead end, we took a staircase down instead and found passport control.

The business class line was short, which was handy because we had to go through the line twice. The first time, we discovered that we did not have the required visa. Another traveler directed us to the visa line and told us it was "really easy". She was right. For $30 each, we had visas to enter Istanbul. We returned to the line for a second attempt. This time, we flew through passport control and quickly made our way past the baggage collection area to clear customs.

Just outside, we encountered the usual mob of people waiting to pick up friends and family, as well as numerous people offering rides and hotels. We ignored all of this and tried to find the Turkish Airlines Hotel Desk. In keeping with all our adventures in the Istanbul Airport, we walked just far enough toward one end of the hall to decide that what we wanted wasn't there, only to find out at the information desk at other end of the arrival hall that we simply hadn't gone far enough to see the hotel desk.

Finding the hotel desk, we also found an incredibly long line. We joined the line, which was really only moving as people gave up and left. I walked back to a coffee shop and got bottled water for both of us. After some time, I suggested that I would stay in the line and Craig should go around and see if, perhaps, there was a second line for business class passengers that was just out of sight (and hopefully shorter).

He walked around in time to encounter another business class passenger looking for the same option. That passenger, however, was loudly complaining. I had commented on this behavior of another passenger up in the lounge - I understand that it's upsetting and frustrating and difficult, and that you might be tired and cranky and disoriented, but shouting at and abusing the only person who might help you seems like a really bad idea. So Craig hung back and pretended he did not hear the conversation. After the abusive customer left, Craig politely inquired about a business class line (despite having just heard a lengthy rant about why there ought to be one). The employee said there was not a line, but there was a business class help desk just upstairs. He wasn't sure they could help, but thought they might.

Craig returned to me with this story and left me in the line to inquire at the help desk upstairs. While I waited in line: two young women ahead of me heard back from someone they knew only through social media, this person offered them a place to stay, so they excitedly left the line; two college boys behind me decided to return to the airport and find a bench to sleep on; at least three other couplets abandoned the line for reasons I could not hear or understand. These departures were the only perceptible movement in the line.

Also while I waited, one of the polite travelers I had seen up in the lounge stopped by and asked me if this was the line for the hotel desk. I knew from his conversation upstairs that he, like us, was traveling to Abu Dhabi. Like us, he would have accepted a flight to Dubai if that option had been available. Unlike us, he had gone into the lounge to use the wifi for a bit before embarking on his adventure to find a hotel room. He headed toward the back of the line. He stopped to take pictures twice - I would be willing to bet that his pictures look very similar to the ones Craig took from nearly the same spots. But ultimately, he did not join the queue. He disappeared in the direction of passport control.

A few minutes later, Craig texted telling me to get out of the line. He came down the escalator behind a Turkish Airline employee from the business desk upstairs. She did a double take at the line, which was snaking around the open area. She guided us through and around the line to a side door to the hotel desk. She disappeared inside and returned with a hotel voucher. She told us that the shuttle would be at least 30 minutes from now or we could take a taxi for a ten minute ride.

We decided on the taxi. As you might expect by now, we walked the length of the reception hall to find the door that led to the taxi queue. Once we got in a taxi, we had a new challenge. The voucher didn't have the name of the hotel. Craig tried to call Turkish Airlines customer support but could not get an answer. The taxi driver searched on his phone a bit, while driving which added to the fun, and decided on a hotel to take us to.

We arrived at the hotel, still uncertain this was the one for which we had a voucher. Security at the hotel opened the taxi's trunk before letting us in. We needn't have worried. At the reception desk, our voucher was exchanged for two room keys, a dinner voucher, a lunch voucher, and the promise of a buffet breakfast. It was late, but they were still serving dinner in the hotel restaurant.

We stopped in our room just long enough to leave our bags and use the bathroom and wash our hands. Usually, we would shower before going to dinner. We had clothes to change into, but we decided to keep them for the following day.

Dinner was edible, but nothing to write home about. I do have pictures, though! We had two options on the voucher - chicken or meatballs. We both ordered chicken. We were served the oddest selection of chopped veggies as a salad. We were served a lentil soup that I very much enjoyed. The chicken was unexceptional, but the rice did taste amazing despite the fact that it appeared to be plain white rice. I'm not sure if it was the rice or the fact that we were both exhausted and we've been eating low carb for so long.

 




By this point, the cold/flu I had been fighting before we left was starting to take hold. We returned to our room to shower and crash.

To Abu Dhabi

[Note: The title of this post is somewhat misleading. Our flight to Abu Dhabi did not go according to plan, so we will not actually get to Abu Dhabi just yet.]

After a busy day, we were ready to go to the airport. I mentioned in an earlier post all of the things I had to pack. Among our four checked bags, I carefully divided things in case of any delay. I had a change of underwear and socks for each of us in each bag. Each bag also had at least one complete outfit for each of us. We've had good luck with our baggage, but I don't take chances, especially on our long trips. I make sure that my blue shoes are in the same bag as any blue dresses and that the bag with my black shoes includes my black dresses. I might be just a bit particular about how I pack.

On our last trip to the UAE (to Dubai, that time), I had taken my game laptop as a carry on item. I had packed it an over the shoulder bag that frustrated me for the entire trip. This time, I decided I would put that heavy laptop into a rolling bag that I would carry on. I have a new Travelpro suitcase that is carry on size and has four wheel spinners. I was looking forward to giving this bag a try.

Due to the unfortunate scheduling of my cycle, I also packed two complete changes of clothes in the carry on bag, just as a precaution. As I was divvying up our clothes among the bags, I pulled out a change of clothes for Craig as well and tucked it into my rolling bag. With our toiletries, prescription medications, and clothing, the laptop in just fit in the suitcase. I put the laptop on top, of course, as I expected to pull it out as we went through security.

We set off for the airport with four bags to be checked, one carry on suitcase, and two backpacks.

As we checked in, I watched the scale with each of our checked bags carefully. The day before, when I'd seen my niece off, we had to repack her bags so that the larger bag was not overweight. Fortunately, I had anticipated this and packed her motorcycle jacket on top of the larger bag. Transferring that over fixed the weight issue, even if it did make the smaller bag difficult to close. Traveling business class or with Craig's frequent flier status, we can occasionally get away with bags that are just over the weight limit. But due to the efficiency of my packing, weight is always a concern with checked bags. We were traveling with our biggest bag (the greatest danger of being overweight, but I'd packed the Triscuits and CheeseIts for the team in that bag to mitigate this problem), our two medium sized bags (I have a hard-sided Tumi and Craig has the new hard-sided TravelPro I bought him for Christmas), and Craig's carry-on sized Tumi. One of our medium sized bags was closest to the weight limit, but I can't remember which.

We were flying Turkish Air for the first time. And for the first time in either of our experiences, they also wanted to weigh our carry on bags. I had seen signs about this in the queue, but hadn't really considered the matter. As business class travelers, we could each take two carry on bags and one personal item, each item limited to 8 kg. Unlike the 50 pound weight limit for checked bags, I have no reference for an 8 kg bag.

We dropped our two backpacks and the rolling bag onto the scale together - 30 kg. But then they wanted to weight the rolling bag alone - over 14 kg. The lady suggested we check the bag. With my laptop in it, I couldn't check the bag. Not to mention that I'd packed our prescriptions in the rolling bag instead of our backpacks.

Craig asked if the weight limit applied even to business class. She informed us that she might let us get away with a kg or two, but not six. I said that the problem was just my laptop. The lady again suggested we check the bag. I asked her to weigh the bag after I removed the laptop.

I pulled out just the laptop, in a neoprene sleeve. The enormous charging brick was packed deeper in the bag, so I left it in the bag. We zipped the bag back up and set it on the scale. The woman actually gasped at the change in weight. The bag weighed just over 8 kg without the laptop. She tagged the bag as a carry on and we set off with me holding the laptop under my arm. Just out of sight, we opened the rolling bag and tucked my laptop back inside. The whole point of taking that bag was to avoid carrying my 5+ kg laptop for the entire trip!

We made our way through security. Juggling two laptops and all the toiletries with my two bags was a bit of a struggle, but I managed because I had packed everything to be easily removed. It was Craig's bag that got held up, because he didn't remove his iPad with his laptop. Every security line seems to have a different requirement on this. Sometimes an iPad or Kindle will send your bag back. On other occasions, the officers will yell at you for removing them from your bag. My Kindle went through but his iPad did not.

After putting our things back together, we went to the lounge. Our flight was delayed by 20 minutes, so we had plenty of time for snacks. We were also accosted not once, but twice (by the same woman), to use the wall outlet I was sitting beside to charge her phone. From our seats, we could see at least three other unused wall outlets, all without other people sitting near them!

Eventually, we went to the gate for the most unintuitive boarding process I had yet experienced. But we managed to get boarded and settled in for the flight.

Looking back at my TripIt, it looks like we ended up taking off 59 minutes late. I didn't keep track, myself. We had a tight layover in Istanbul, just 70 minutes. But we expected that we would make up some time during the 13 hour flight. The outstanding question was, of course, would our checked bags make the transfer?

As it turns out, that was the least of our problems. TripIt says we landed 51 minutes late in Istanbul. But I can tell you, because I was texting my niece, that we touched down 22 minutes before our connecting flight was scheduled to depart. Upon landing, we taxied not to a gate, but someplace on the runway where we boarded a bus. By the time we tumbled off the bus into the terminal, our connecting flight no longer showed on the flight boards.

After a great deal of searching and two stops for directions, we found a line that appeared to be customer service for Turkish Airlines. But the employees there started disappearing. I saw a sign noting that this was customer service for economy and I remembered that Turkish Airlines has a much lauded lounge in the Istanbul airport. I suggested that we might make our way there instead.

This was a bit easier to find, though the wayfinding the airport did pose a few challenges. Inside the lounge, we found ourselves in a long line of similarly displaced travelers. After a great deal of discussion, we were rescheduled on the same flight for the following day and directed downstairs to the hotel desk for a hotel voucher. We were about to spend 24 hours in Istanbul!