Regrouping...

We've just returned from our 17 day trip to London and Istanbul and boy, are our arms tired!

Seriously, we were exhausted when we returned. We flew home on a Turkish Airlines flight from IST to ORD (Chicago) and then connected there for Dallas (on American). Everything went great till we got to ORD! We had flown Turkish from LHR (Heathrow) to IST in the middle of the trip, and although our flight was late, it was otherwise harmless. The 12 hour flight from IST to ORD was a pleasant surprise. Turkish Airlines has a looooong list of special menu choices that you can order in advance, and we asked for seafood (what the heck!) meals. We had a reasonable tasty baked (?) fish filet and some veggies sauteed in olive oil and for our "main" meal we even had the added "luxury" of another seafood item, that being a salad of shrimp, smoked fish, lox and roasted peppers, rather tasty for economy class. In addition to the very decent food we were served, Turkish also still gives us coach folk an amenities kit with socks, toothbrush, comb, eye mask, etc. The seats were comfortable and the personal screen movie selection was broad, even including a Bollywood flick (brownie points for that).

Anyway, once we got off that flight, the fun began. Our connection from ORD to DFW was delayed--not so bad, but about 45 minutes. ORD--or at least all the AA flights--seemed to be plagued with delays. And when we got to DFW, 2 of our 3 bags had not arrived with us. We knew they had come from IST as we had brought them through customs at ORD...anyway, by the time we made our mishandled baggage reports and got home, we had been up 24 hours straight. And then about 7 hours later--at 5:50 a.m.--our phone rang with the news that the baggage delivery van was outside our house with the bags. So much for a good night's sleep but we were glad to have our stuff!


So that's just the boring air transport stuff...more details to come, and I swear I will figure out how to post photos on here!