Getting there

There was much to arrange for this trip, so it is worth noting how much our favorite travel site, tripadvisor.com, was helpful in giving insights and useful information. Ultimately, this site helped us with:

• Istanbul hotel (Sirkeci Konak)
• transport from the Ataturk airport and renting a van/driver for a Monday adventure (Backpackers)
• Cooking class Tuesday morning (Cooking a La Turka)
• roll-our-own tour from Port Said via "Marvelous Egypt"
• Most importantly, helping us settle on use of a transport chair for Dick (much worry and differing reports re: whether the cobblestone and amount of uneven sidewalks would make it futile

There was also much to consider in scheduling, but here Jim made a complete bungle.
AT&T managers were advised last year to take care arranging travel after April due to potential for strikes.
At first we'd decided we needed to complete travel by March 31.
There was also our friend Andy's 50th birthday on April 1.
There was also Easter ... But when was Easter??
First bungle ... Off to the internet to search. Got bad information, thought Easter was Apr 15.
Out travel agent found a Costa cruise to Venice in March (nice, but not as "Eastern Mediterranean" as Dick wanted) and this Silversea cruise ending Apr 6.
The Silversea itinerary was much closer to what we wanted, and it would get us home just before the AT&T "travel at your risk" period started. Hmm. No problem with an April 15 Easter also.

Alas what about Andy?? ummm we forgot!!!!

And plunked down our money. And Easter is April 8??????
But the handbell choir is playing on Easter!

Fortunately Andy is forgiving! And young Andrew from bell choir's mom, Jennifer, agreed to direct the handbells and saved me from leaving the crew high and dry. (Thanks Jennifer!)

A welcome bit of news in December! Our pals Bill and Mark from Laguna Beach, CA decided to join us. After a bit of searching they decided they'd condescend to stay at our hotel in Istanbul, even though it fell a bit below their exacting standards. Also nice: they have a friend, Demet, who they met on a Silversea cruise a few years ago. Demet would be in town and offered to show us around a bit, so off to get a van/driver for the day before our cruise starts.

Next big decision: how to get to the pyramids in Egypt?
And could Dick manage ok with transport chair?
the cruise excursion called for too long a day and were discouraging about a transport chair, so thank you tripadvisor.com and Marvelous Egypt!

And what about mobility assistance? We finally settled on a Nova 330 collapsible transport chair with (very important) 12 inch wheels. The larger wheels will make it easier to deal with cobblestone which we knew would be a challenge in Istanbul. I will sing an ode to our Nova in a future post.

(side note: as i type this while Dick snoozes, the call to prayer is being sung. Marvelous!)

We had much to arrange before the trip.

• My running pal Astrid's sister Liisu agreed to stay at the house and tend to the critters but (gulp) there was much cleaning and picking up to be done!
• Silversea is a bit shi-shi and has a strong dress code, and I was (unlike me completely!) obsessing over this, so with Scott's advice, off to Nordstrom to buy a new blazer, slacks and a couple shirts so that I'd be fashionably attired (well, fashionable for me, anyway). Of course, nothing fits perfectly, so several trips to have adjustments made.
• Nellie (14 years and slowing down) and Dick both had a few extra health challenges to be managed. Drugs to be bought and shipped.
• Our regular UPS driver hurt himself, and the replacement driver botched delivery on several important items, so there were important shipments expected, missed and tracked/reworked.
• AT&T's (failed) $4-billion bet on T-mobile has had its impact on our organization's budget, and we were busily dug in with a complete replan of our 2012 efforts.

Although I started packing 2 weeks before and started sacrificing sleep starting Monday of our last week, by Wednesday I was in quite the panic that we weren't going to make it or would leave house and work a shambles. Only the concern of friends and anticipation of the trip kept me sane, and with one hour of sleep Thursday night, sudden inspiration hit and I whipped through a rather long to-do list (most impressive accomplishment: writing my 2012 performance objectives - a tedious and mind-numbing task usually even at my best - in a surprisingly short time). On Friday morning, Dick and I made it to work at the planned time and while he enjoyed a spring mornimg on the 2nd fl porch at work, I glugged coffee and did my best song and dance presenting to our customers at a noon meeting.

The meeting finished, and now it was time to catch the limo. Fortunately, Morris limo was right on time, and with my boss and fellow managers waving us on, off to JFK were we.

Our driver was from Morocco and was wonderful to chat with. We talked international affairs, US politics and culture the entire trip out. He was a pretty savvy guy as he knew just how to flatter us: "are you journalists? You know so much about international news!"
Well of course he got a good tip from us for that! (And we had a good laugh at ourselves later, thank you NPR and BBC world news!)

Our past travel where we arranged for use of a wheelchair at the airport for Dick had spoiled us and gotten us accustomed to being completely taken care of. Traveling with your own chair makes things a little different, we discovered. The first omen for how things would be came the moment we arrived at JFK, and no one was there to help me get our bags and Dick from the street to the check-in counter. So i did my best pack mule imitation and managed it.

Second omen: instead of taking our checkins the agent told me I had to lug everuthing to a dropoff area. More pack mule'ing!

Once rid of the bags and thru security (again, with no help at all from staff), we went off to find a beer and nachos.

Getting onto our Turkish air flight, we were able to get check the collapsed chair, and down the 777 we walked to our seats, which to our delight were not-quite-bulkhead-but-were-first-in-row for our section. Dick was pretty beat, but I of course *must* get my share of movies while in flight, and I was happy to start off with "Big Fish", that Tim Burton movie with Ewan Macgregor at his most charming, doing a passable southern accent. Fun movie if you can appreciate whimsy (good benchmark: if you liked "Joe vs. the Volcano", you'll like this one).

Then a relatively recent movie, "Another Earth", an indie drama, also very well done. From the trailer, I'd sort of thought the whole "Another Earth" idea itself was sort of corny, but the movie is very clever in how it uses the device in telling the story, so if one gets past obvious questions like "why aren't the tides completely screwed up by the arrival of another planet so close to ours!", I think you'd find the "human story" to be very powerful and the acting is superb. Great unexpected ending too that doesn't wrap everything up neatly.

The flight was uneventful, and was about 9 hours all told. Backpackers was there to get us, and while our driver wasn't chatty, he certainly did yeoman's work at the very end weaving us thru the old city streets and backed up traffic to get us to our hotel.

I'd arranged an early check-in with the hotel, and while we had tea and OJ, they got our room ready. The elevator of the hotel was about 2 ft by 2 ft (OK I exaggerate, it was 3 ft x 3 ft - just enough room for Dick in his chair and me to literally squeeze in). Our room, while a bit small (and missing a chest of drawers alas), is comfortable, and so we very gratefully had a 3 hour nap. We were in Turkey!