Days 1 & 2

I have been home in California for almost a week and I still fall asleep at inconvenient times and awake at inconvenient times. But I believe I have recovered enough to begin blogging my adventures. The time changes when traveling west are more difficult than when I travel east, so I still find myself on Turkish time.

Day One was spent entirely in travel. We left Kent, OH, on the morning of Friday, June 18. When we arrived at Cleveland Hopkins Airport we checked in, went through security and ate lunch at a very nice British style pub. We then met up with the others in our travel group (22 of us all together), boarded our aircraft and began our journey. We connected with our overseas flight at Newark Liberty International. We had one hour and fifty minutes to make our connection for Zurich. No time for dawdling but sufficient for our purposes. I was fortunate that, after dinner on board our aircraft, I slept the entire trip across the Atlantic.

When I awoke it was Day Two and we were over Europe preparing to descend into Switzerland. We had only one hour and five minutes to make our connection in Zurich to the Swiss Air flight we would take to Istanbul. I almost missed the flight because we had to go through security all over again and I became the random passenger for increased security screening. To make matters worse, our departure gate wasn’t physically in the terminal building. I was required to hop on shuttle which drove us to our aircraft. Fortunately my son-in-law and another person in our group stayed back to wait for me. We were the last on the aircraft and they slammed the doors behind us.

It was afternoon on Saturday, June 19, when we arrived in Istanbul. We cleared passport control, rounded up our luggage, and then waited while the three in our party whose luggage had not arrived on our flight made their claims with Swiss Air. Our tour bus with guide and driver was waiting for us. We were whisked away directly to St. Anthony of Padua Cathedral to celebrate Sunday liturgy in a small chapel set aside for us. Father Nick, the priest who was traveling as part of our group celebrated Sunday Mass just for our intimate little assembly.

After Mass, our tour bus took us to the Grand Bazaar for a brief visit because it is closed on Sunday. I was overwhelmed and would have liked to come another day and to stay for hours. The Grand Bazaar is a covered structure containing over 4,000 shops and miles of internal streets. Filled with people shopping and vendors hawking their wares the din was deafening; we dared not go far from where we entered or we would be permanently lost. I do believe I could have spent days there. And while there are lots of shops attractive to tourists, this really is a place where the residents also shop.

From the bazaar we were finally delivered to the Hotel Kent where we checked in, surrendered our passports, freshened up and went for a buffet dinner. I can’t speak for any others in our party, but I for one escaped to my room and into bed very shortly after dinner ended.

Live long and prosper!