Hello Friends. I had a full summer in Brattleboro, Vermont... full of an ecstatic array of live (mostly) outdoor music and wild abandoned dancing with friends... swimming in the West River and Putney Falls... hiking the trails behind my house... painting my house... joyfully hosting weekly Ash and Friends Pizza and movie nights... creating and being at a hybrid Meditation Family weekend retreat in Vermont... hosting an Everything Party at my house where my friends could see the artsy home improvements, see and meet Michael and Kira, and say Bon Voyage to me (because I would be traveling far and wide again). I also did weekly writing, on two days, with two different friends, writing two different books, which I hope to focus on finishing while doing this traveling far and wide.
The day I left the USA was Sunday, November 3, 2024 (three days ago). I had slept very little for many nights, including that last one. There is a reason why I wasn't sleeping. I will tell you more about that later.
I had a lot to do to wrap up the house. On Sunday, I still had a lot to do so, even though I was sleep deprived, I felt grateful when I woke up early. The clock on the wall showed 6:30 am. My phone, however, showed that Daylight Savings Time (DST) had crept in and it was actually 5:30 am. "Woohoo," I said out loud, "DST is genius!"
DST is "Genius" as in a "genie," as in "a disembodied spirit" (genius), as in how Elizabeth Gilbert talks about genius in her 2009 TED talk, or like how Genius dropped in on William Willett and whoever else helped move the idea of DST to our current reality. In that moment, Daylight Savings Time felt like a magical genius move.
I looked out the slider to the sun rising from behind Mt. Wantastiquet. Mother Nature was Genius.
I did as much as I had time to do and at noonish I drove to see Michael and Kira (in Northampton, MA). They were at Jake's having brunch. They had ordered me a quinoa bowl with chicken. I tell you this because... guess what my long flight (over the Atlantic Ocean) served us? Yes, it is true. We were served quinoa and chicken.
I had concerns about what would and would not go through at the security gate. Out of all my concerns, there was only one thing they wanted to check: Michelle's and Jessica's cremains. I got through with everything, ashes included.
At the gate, I learned that "one carry on and one under-the-seat bag" was just that. I had a carry on suitcase. I had an under-the-seat bag. Check. I had my phone-wallet slung across me. That was not counted as extra. Yay. Because my passport does not fit in my phone-wallet, I brought my little kid-sized backpack. I thought it would be counted as a pocket book... a purse. I did not think they counted purses as bags. They did. "One under-the-seat bag," I was told, "even a pocket book counts." I also had a water bottle in a sling-over-the-shoulder water bottle holder that I did not think would be counted. It was counted (as a bag). I also had a "neck wrap" with a hidden zipper, containing... my underwear, socks, winter hat and gloves, two tins of smoked oysters, a box-worth of Celestial Seasonings Vermont Maple tea bags, and two boxes-worth of Host Defense Mushrooms Mycobrew Mocha packets. Yes, really. I am beyond grateful they did not count my (extra luggage) neck wrap (as another bag). That hidden-zippered-neck-wrap is a(nother) Genius idea, right?! I still had to repack to accommodate the little backpack (that, oh by the way, was filled) and water bottle/sling. Damn it was tight, but hey... I got 'er done.
That first leg of the trip started with a connecting (national) Jet Blue flight from Logan to JFK (in NYC). Forty-five minutes later, I took the long flight (over the Atlantic Ocean) that served quinoa chicken, that would bring me to Amsterdam.
On that flight I fell in love with my seat neighbors, a couple originally from St. Martin now living in Amsterdam, heading home from an epic vacation cruise-family reunion. We talked about me visiting them in Amsterdam in the spring. At the time, we all thought this to be a wonderful plan. They were riding an after-vacation wave. We shall see if it happens.
My new friends slept well. I was impressed. I learned that I, however, do not sleep well sitting up... and I do not poop while traveling. I was tired and distended. Those are uncomfortable things to feel. Still, when the lights came on inside our aircraft for chocolate croissants and coffee service, and I opened my shade to daylight in the sky, I enjoyed the clouds.
I left New York Sunday night. We arrived at AMS (in Amsterdam) at 11:30 (am) on Monday. It was not that it was an extraordinarily long flight. It was a six+ hour flight. The reason the flight took two days was because the flight was at night, and because of the the time change.
We landed and walked through the tunnel from the plane into the airport. I asked the gate attendant about my next flight. "Where do I go next to get to Pegasus Airlines... for the 3 pm flight to Istanbul?" The attendant looked it up. She said, "go to gate G2." Gate G2 was literally on the other side of the airport, maybe a 30-minute walk. It was good to walk. I arrived at Gate G2 three hours early for my flight.
I used the women's bathroom and was impressed with the pegs on the wall in the stall. I remembered them from my AMS bathroom experiences last year. They look like art.
Back at gate G2 I arranged my stuff so that I could lay down on a bench with my puffy long vest-jacket under me and my puffy long-sleeved short jacket over me... my (almost dead) phone-wallet (with an alarm set for two-hours) in my little backpack near my head (so I would hear the alarm), plugged into the external USB port to the external battery pack housed inside my carry-on suitcase... my bags hooked together next to me in such a way that I had one arm wrapped (comfortably) in a loop so that the whole bundle was safe and secure... an eye mask on and ear plugs in... and I slept.
I slept for about an hour. I woke an hour early because there was an announcement for final boarding at gate G2 for the flight before mine, going to Antalya. I thought about how I might like to be going (now) to Antalya, but was not. I was going (first) to Izmik and was flying to Istanbul.
I sat up, groggy, reorganized my stuff so I could take it all with me to the bathroom, stood and started walking away from gate G2, and heard an announcement that the next flight, to SAW in Istanbul (my flight) was now at gate E8. I turned around and walked to gate G2.
"Did you say the gate to SAW was changed," I asked. "Yes," the gate G2 attendant said, "It is at E8 now." I must have looked dazed. I was still half asleep. "The gate for the flight to SAW has been changed to gate E8," she repeated, "echo eight." I looked at her and she said "You better hurry. Gate E8 is far away."
I did not use the bathroom. I walked back toward where I had originally come from, back toward the other side of the AMS Airport. I walked quickly, with my luggage and bungee corded bag and coats and little backpack and newly charged phone. I started to smell myself. I smelled that stinky sneaker smell. It was not pleasant.
Twenty minutes later, I waited in line while a man talked at length with the only one attendant (out of three standing there) who was "working" at gate E8, made sure it was the correct gate that I should be at, asked if I had time to use a bathroom, and began, quickly, to the women's bathroom. The women's bathroom was around the corner. I had passed it on my way. I had hesitated for a moment and decided I better not chance missing my flight. On that little walk back to it, I had a wee accident. The accident turned out to be a smudge. I did a toilet paper clean-up as best I could and went back to the gate.
I asked the gate E8 attendant to print my ticket and asked her to please look at my bags and tell me if I needed to arrange them in a particular way. Every airline company has different rules. Turned out, with Pegasus, though I had paid for a carry-on and an under the seat bag, I needed to bag-check my carry-on suitcase. It was too big and needed to go under the plane. It also could not have electronics in it. My laptop needed to come out and I would have to carry it on the plane with me.
I needed to have only one bag to carry-on, though luckily, the laptop did not count, and I could put the laptop in a second bag, which I had, making it easier to carry. I was also allowed to carry on my extras: the phone-wallet slung across my chest and the hidden-zippered neck-wrap. I (obviously) can not tell you enough times how incredibly handy that genius magical neck-wrap has been.
I watched as they took away my carry-on suitcase. I sat at gate E8 for a full 10 minutes or so. Then we boarded.
Turkish men tend to be dark-haired and dark-eyed. They are not all tall or handsome. This one young flight attendant was especially tall, dark, and handsome. I do not think this picture of him (below) shows just how breathtakingly good looking he was. He was truly what you would call eye-candy. The picture (below) does show that this flight was taking us to the land of the Turkish-speaking people... the land where "EXIT" becomes "'çıkış."
I arrived in SAW (on the Asian side of Istanbul) at 21:30 on (9:30 pm). Unfortunately, my carry-on suitcase came back from the baggage claim carousel damaged. The top handle broke off and one of the (four-double) wheels was gone. I waited to talk with a Pegasus employee about what to do. She told me to take pictures, go onto the Pegasus website, and email a damaged baggage claim report. I left the airport with my now difficult-to-roll carry-on suitcase and all other bags-in-one strapped to it to find my way to my hotel.
Another unfortunate thing that happened that night was that the hotel I had booked was (unbeknownst to me) on the European side. I had booked my flight though Trip.com to land at the SAW airport and not the IST airport on the European side of Istanbul, and I had asked them to also book me a hotel near SAW because... that is what my final destination host (Fusun) had told me to do. She had told me that the closest ferry I would need to take to get to her home (where I would house-sit until Nov. 24) was near SAW, on the Asian side. The Han Hotel (that I had inadvertently booked for that night) was a long bus ride to a taxi ride, almost two-hours away. I arrived at my hotel close to midnight.
The lobby was pretty. The receptionist counter wall was made of rocks and geodes and crystals.
There was a table made from a huge piece of amethyst.
There were more gorgeous mineral-based items in the lobby, and I will show them to you later. For now I want you to know that I did not take pictures at midnight, with a week's worth of very little sleep, teeth that had not been brushed for two days, stress-soaked stinky sneakers on my feet, and sort-of-cleaned-up-the-smudged undies still on my body. No. I took the (above and more later) pictures the next morning before leaving.
In my hotel room, I put my stinky sneakers to dry in the open window, put all the clothes i had on me in a laundry travel bag, took a very long shower, brushed my teeth while in that very hot shower, took pictures of my damaged carry-on suitcase and emailed Pegasus, set my alarm for 9 am, and went to bed (at 3 am Tuesday morning).
I am tired. I will fill you in later with more (pictures and words). For now, I want you to know I arrived safe and sound (and much cleaner) to Fusun's home in Izmik, Turkey.
It is amazing here. I can barely wait to show you...
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