December 20, 2019: Trials and Tribulations of Travel

Greetings from Istanbul, Turkey (where it is a bit past midnight). As always, feel free to read or toss; keep or pass on to others with an interest in travel.

We just started our 2019 travels (as many of you know, we generally take a fairly complex trip in December – although after this year, now that I am no longer teaching and not tied to the academic calendar, we are considering moving the annual trip to September/October – stay tuned). This has been a more difficult trip to plan than other years and you’ll find out more as my travel notes continue in subsequent days. Anyway, the crux of the trip is Uzbekistan and Azerbaijan. But we wanted to be in Geneva to celebrate the holidays with Mike’s family. (One of his nieces lives in London but comes to Geneva for Christmas, and the other lives in Geneva. And this year, there are three grand nieces / nephews under the age of two!)

To fly to Uzbekistan (Tashkent) one needs to go through either Istanbul or Moscow. Having been to both cities we easily selected Istanbul as our connecting link; and because we would be going to Geneva for several days prior to Uzbekistan, we decided to do a three-day layover in Istanbul (for Mike’s birthday on the 21^st of December). Since we’ve been here before we figured we could spend these three short days exploring neighborhoods we hadn’t visited on prior trips. So we were excited about this little “travel interruption.”  We had an entire suitcase of gifts, so we needed to check a bag—something we have not done in decades. We also had a bit of a dilemma in that —not being accustomed to checking bags, we decided to buy luggage locks. Then we couldn’t figure out how to set the code. Mike blamed all of this on defective locks (!!) but it was clear that we just didn’t understand the directions(although they were written for a fourth grader). Once at the airport, waiting to check the damn bags, I ran to a shop and bought three luggage locks that used KEYS! We were able to make two work and one bag wound up being lockless.

Anyway, after flying for about 25 hours (following an intense 24 hours of trying to finish office project-related tasks, sending off the annual FTA card, running around to get last minute “necessities” for travel, and meeting with an attorney about our will (!!), we packed into the wee hours – not quite as organized as usual, but completing the tasks at hand. I finished at about 2 am. Mike crashed by midnight.

Since we knew we had to bring an extra suitcase to carry the gifts – mostly for the kids – we figured we might as well check our own suitcases and just bring computer bags as carry-ons. Thus we checked in three bags, two of which somehow got connected to Mike’s ticket. Our flight to Paris (where we would change planes to Istanbul) was to leave at 2:25 pm, and to board at 1:40. The plane boarded at SFO pretty much on time and given our status we were on the plane early. But 2:25 came and went. At about 3:00 we were informed there was a problem with the oxygen masks. The issue would be fixed by 3:30.. and then 4:00 … and finally we had the go-ahead signal at about 4:40. While we had a fairly cushy layover at Charles deGaulle, each successive delay tightened that window. We landed at CDG at 11:30 a.m. and after some totally screwy instructions, we found our way to our connecting gate just as it was boarding.

The Turkish Air flight was pleasant, although Business Class seems to mean that you are in the same seats as the back of the plane, except that the middle seat is blocked. Food was actually good on Turkish Air.

Well after 26 hours, we landed in Istanbul (the airport is very new; not the same one we came to on our last trip here in 2010. Anyway, one of the three checked bags arrived (Mike’s!) and the other two were not on our flight. After strolling the extremely large baggage claim area, we resigned and went to Turkish Air Baggage Claim. They seem to feel that the two bags didn’t make the connection in Paris to Istanbul. They gave us a phone number and we headed to our hotel. We were really tired but got the carry on bags up to the room and then headed upstairs for dinner. Turns out that the hotel (Hotel Georges)is quite delightful and they have a wonderful rooftop restaurant and bar.

We ate and then Mike headed down to our room to crash and I sipped my wine glazing out to the wonderful skyline and twinkling lights of this 15,000,000+ city. Glad to be here. Hoping our bags come (one of the missing bags contains all of the presents; the other has all my gear and all kinds of work that must be done on the trip.

Will report back tomorrow.

Fern