Getting There

Getting to Turkey ended up being more of an adventure than we anticipated.  Last year Stacy and I made 2 round trips between SE Asia and the US, one being a lovely 34 hour ordeal.  We were very pleased to see our total travel time to Turkey was only 15 hours.  Unfortunately this was too good to be true.  We left Detroit at around 6pm bound for Toronto, which was only a 45 minute flight.  We boarded a 14 passenger plane and were told by one of the two pilots that if we needed anything just let them know!  We then took off, with a full view of the cockpit.  Once in Toronto, complete with a stamp in our passports, we arrived at our gate only to learn our flight had been delayed an hour.  Since we had a two hour layover before our flight from Zurich to Istanbul we were not too concerned.  Before we knew it we boarded the plane, complete with individual screens, and were ready for our short flight of seven hours.  We backed away from the gate and then did not move for about 20 minutes.  The captain then came on intercom and said that our engine had had a false start and they were going to try and see if the problem would be an easy fix.  20 minutes later we were informed that something had to be replaced on the plane and this would take two to three hours.  Since we could not stay on the plane for this everyone had to disembark, we were given $10 to Tim Hortons and they brought out the snack cart.  As airplanes have become very stingy with the drinks I snagged 4 diet cokes and snacks, while Stacy went to wait in line at Tim Hortons.  She ended up spending most of the three hours it took to fix our plane getting smoothies.  So now being four hours later than planned we left Toronto at about 2am, obviously missing our flight to Turkey.  Oh and apparently Rob Lowe was on our plane, though I didn't see him some passengers in front of Stacy were remarking on the sighting.  We flew to Zurich easy enough and then had to convince Swiss immigration that we needed to be issued new boarding passes and they eventually let us through.  We were then booked on a flight to Istanbul and were issued 18 Swiss franks to spend on food.  We made it to our gate with time to spare and enjoyed a nice pasta dinner with beer on Canada Air.  We arrived in Istanbul, got our luggage, and were at our hostel before 11pm.

 
~ Randi