I just arrived home to find that everything I had written while in the Turkish Airways Lounge in Istanbul has just vanished into the byte bucket along with my sense of humor. It wasn’t that I had written anything brilliant, it was just that I had put the time and effort into about five paragraphs detailed the insanity and humor of last evening, the flight plus the lounge this morning.
Instead you are getting the shortened version because I arrived home about an hour ago, cranky and tired with a list of tasks longer than my arm and about three days in which to accomplish them.
Afternoon yesterday: Carmen and I hung out, had coffee and kept hands busy with yarn (me knitting, her with the hook). We ran into one of the ex-pat Brits of our acquaintance who joined us till he could check in to Qatar Airlines (apparently Barcelona with a change in Doha was the most reasonably priced option).
Carmen checked in about 2200. I spent the rest of the evening chatting with a Swiss Couple who had spent the last few weeks traveling around in the “new hotel every night” style. They were quite tired and looking forward to being home. Then there was the loud but enthusiastic pair of New Yorkers (also from the ship) who had purchased tickets months ago on Austrian Airways with a plane change in Vienna. But Austrian Airways doesn’t fly into Dubai. Abu Dhabi maybe, but not Dubai. Of course they didn’t have anything in hard copy and have US phones with which they couldn’t get on the network.
Sure enough, when the Lufthansa desk opened they found they were on the Frankfurt flight. Then going to Vienna, then to JFK…. The rest of us were pretty amazed at not even having a reservation number…
This lounge was the do-all for just about all the airlines. It was busy as the major flights going a distance either east or west seem to leave between 2200 -> 0330. Can’t imagine any airport in Europe or the US with a local population willing to deal with that kind of noise at night.
My flight was fine, the food was excellent. Hours were spent in the Thy Lounge attempting to connect to anything or anybody. Hence my comment about everything just vanishing. Arrived in Frankfurt, had a nice discussion with the Immigration guy about what I was doing in Germany again and assured him this was a short stay. Luggage, train, S-bahn. Taxi and a hoist of bags up the steps.
Now which end of my list do I start?? The laundry end or the sleep end?
