Turkey Trip Details Falling Into Place!

In my excitement about my Christmas in Rome trip I was temporarily neglecting my Turkey trip plans...but no more!

I've booked my flight to Istanbul for September 2007. CL and I got round trip tickets to Istanbul instead of an open jaw because we decided after the group tour ends in Kusadasi, Turkey we will fly back to Istanbul for 4 extra days to explore the city. The group tour starts in Istanbul and we will be flying in a day before the tour starts so with the 4 days at the end of tour we will have a total of 8 days in Istanbul...plenty of time to explore this city.

We also decided on the return flight home to have an overnight layover in NYC. We will get to spend an evening in the Big Apple after a 12(ish) hour direct flight from Istanbul and a morning before we have to fly back home. I like that we are breaking this up instead of flying directly home from Istanbul, which would have been close to 24 hours in transit!

I've booked the first night in Istanbul with the same hotel we will be staying at on the group tour. It's the Best Western Obelisk Hotel in the Sultanhamet area of Istanbul...and with the tour group discount we are getting the room for 68Euro per night. We contemplated staying in that hotel again for our 4 day return to Istanbul but I found some other hotel options through my research and came up with the Hotel Uyan in the Sultanhamet area for 90Euro per night (if we pay in cash we will get an 8% discount!), but it's had rave reviews on Fodors and Trip Advisor so we decided to book it. And the great thing about both these hotels is that they provide complementary pick up at the airport, which we will need for both stays.

Now that the hotels and trans-Atlantic airfare are squared away the only thing I have left to coordinate for the Turkey trip is the one way flight from Izmir (closest airport to Kusadasi where the tour ends) to Istanbul. There are several options for this...2 low cost air carriers which haven't published the schedules for October 2007 and Turkish Airlines. It looks like we will be able to get a fairly inexpensive airfare for this short flight (takes about an hour)...I think the price will be around $60.00, not too bad! The only other loose ends to tie up will be a hotel for the layover in NYC, but I will work on that during the summer and maybe get some help there with a former boss from one of my old hotels...keeping fingers crossed on that one! And coordinating transportation to and from the airport here at home.

All this planning has been done so far without a guidebook! Gotta love the internet! I determined that there are several Turkey guidebooks which will have new editions published in the spring, so I don't want to buy a guidebook now that is 2 years old...I am patiently waiting for April to roll around when I can get my hands on the "latest and greatest" edition of a Turkey guidebook! :) Yes, I know a bit "anal" but hey, that's me when planning a trip.

So, although I have a good grasp on hotels and flights my "top things to do" haven't been determined yet...that's where the guidebooks will come in!

I'm happy to look at my "trip coordination" list and see it getting smaller!

Well, only 8 more months to read as much as I can on Turkey, and of course start trolling the airline websites for prices to Rome for Christmas...why do I always keep coming back to that Rome trip...hmmmmmm....

Hotel Aberdeen Confirmed!!

I'm happy to report that one of the emails I received over the weekend while I was in Tucson was the confirmation from the hotel in Rome.

I am booked in for the 2 nights prior to the tour starting. December 23 and 24 of 2007. I know, maybe I'm a little "annal" when it comes to trip planning, but I wanted to have the room booked early since it is during the Christmas holidays and I didn't want to be going crazy later in the year trying to book a hotel.

Bon Natale...Roma 2007!

Ciao!

The coldest weather in years!!!

Yes, I was in Tucson over the past weekend and the temperatures were the coldest they have had in years! The high during the day was in the upper 40's. But it was sunny and clear blue skies.

The weather didn't really matter though since the purpose of the trip was to visit some of my very most favorite people...The Blanchards!

Lisa, Allison, Sara and Ken met me at the Tucson airport on Friday afternoon. My flight was on time and I didn't check any bags so we were out the door and in the car just before 5pm!

We were all pretty hungry so a stop at Mi Nidita was in order..some of the BEST Mexican food I have ever had...and of course the celebratory margarita! This restaurant is very popular and it was crowded when we got there, we had a 45 minute wait, but it was so worth it.

I had my first tamale there and LOVED it! Very Yumo. The chile rellano was a bit too hot for me, but that didn't stop Ken from eating it! :) After all that food we were ready for the next expedition.

And where would that expedition be to? Target of course! The story goes like this...I thought I was being so diligent. I checked the US Airways website for the carry-on bag rules and it said to use 3 ounce bottles for liquids and everything had to fit into one 1-gallon ziplock bag. What the website failed to mention was that the 3 ounce bottles had to be labeled "3 ounces" and the ziplock bag had to be quart sized not gallon. So, at the security check point in Savannah I had to dump my shampoo, conditioner, toothpaste and deodorant among other things. At first I was a bit ticked off, but then I calmed down and figured since I was visiting Ken and Lisa they would have this stuff and I could stop at a store and pick some stuff up. So that's why I needed to stop at Target! After the shopping adventure it was on to Ken and Lisa's house for some quality "catching up with our lives time"!

On Saturday we went to the Tucson Botanical Garden to see the butterfly exhibit and it was great. Saturday evening we had dinner at Ken's mom's house...chicken cordon blue, it was delish!

Sunday we went bowling and it was lots of fun...the kids were too cute rolling the ball down the bowling alley! Sunday night Ken and Lisa got a sitter for the girls and the 3 of us went to dinner. We went for Italian and it was excellent...I had Eggplant Parmesan and Lisa and I split tiramisu for dessert...YUMMO! :)

Monday we spent some time at La Encantada looking in the shops...I went into the Apple Store, that was a first for me since there is not one near me. We had lunch at Sauce which is one of my favorite restaurants in Tucson. I had the chicken, tomato, pine nut and gorgonzola cheese salad...really YUMMO!

All too soon on Monday it was time for me to catch my flight home. I left Tucson at 8:30pm-ish and flew to Phoenix...all 23 minutes from take off to touch down. I had about a 2.5 hours to wait in Phoenix for the "red-eye" flight to Charlotte. I was surprised to find the flying time from Phoenix to Charlotte was only 3 hours, going out it was more like 5 hours...guess the tail winds going east were better then going west! I tried desperately to sleep on that flight, but the 2 people in the row with me decided they wanted to talk for half the flight and I didn't get any sleep at all...even though I kept my eyes closed and my ipod volume up! The plane landed in Charlotte at 5am and the flight to Savannah was scheduled to leave at 9:15am, so I had to kill 4 hours. I tried to rest, but was not able to sleep at all...I was definitely doing the "head bob". By 6:30am the shops and restaurants were opening and I had a bagel and Starbucks coffee. The flight to Savannah left a little late, but we landed at 10:30am and I was home at my house by 11:30am.

I had every intention of sleeping when I got home, but I started going through my emails and then before I knew it 12noon rolled around. I did try to sleep for about an hour but then I had to get up because the pest control man was coming to the house to spray and I was getting my haircut around 3pm.

Once I got back home around 4:30 I got my second wind and was wide awake. By 8pm I was starting to fade and by 10am I was finally in bed and closing my eyes. Needless to say I was asleep before my head hit the pillow. I managed to get out of bed and get to work on time, but my eyelids felt like they weighed a ton!

So I will spend the next couple days catching up on my sleep, and think twice about doing red-eye flights...that is until my next trip to Turkey in September! :)

One more day and I'm Tucson bound!!!!

I just need to get through tomorrow and pack my bags and I am ready to head off to Tucson.

Of course I will be getting up at the crack of dawn on Friday to catch the 7:10am flight out of Savannah...but hey, it's a frequent flyer ticket so I'm not complaining. The only down side is that I won't arrive in Tucson until 4:30pm...I have a really short connection time in Charlotte (just 50 minutes) and a really long connection wait in Phoenix (almost 4 hours)...but it's so worth the final outcome when I get to see my favorite family...The Blanchards! :)

Believe it or not I have not packed my suitcase yet, but I do have a bunch of stuff piled up next to the suitcase. I figure that since it's a relatively short trip, I'll really only be there 3 full days, I don't have to pack a whole lot and I do have a packing list done, so it's really just a matter of tossing everything into my bag and zipping it closed.

So now the big luggage question is to check my bag or carry-on. If I carry-on I have to put all my liquids (toiletries) into one 1-gallon ziplock bag. And I can't put each bottle into a smaller ziplock bag...so the "spill factor" is really getting to me. See, if I have to put all the bottles into just one bag my gut is telling me at least one of those bottles will crack open and then everything in the bag will be goopey. But if I check the bag and put everything as I usually do in individual ziplock bags I run the risk of my bag not showing up in Tucson when I do, especially with just a 50 minute connection time in Charlotte! This isn't the end of the world since I'm staying with friends and I can always put extra stuff in the bag I do carry on, it's just the inconvenience of not having my stuff. At the moment I'm actually leaning toward putting everything into the one ziplock bag and carrying in all on. But I may change my mind before Friday morning! :)

Well, I hope that I will have some fun story to post back here when I return from my trip.

Hola Tucson!

Hotel Aberdeen...Via Firenze 48, Roma, Italia!!!!

Just yesterday I received the information about the hotel I will be staying at in Rome with the Rick Steves tour for Christmas 2007.

I will be staying at the Hotel Aberdeen and being a "good little travel addict" the first thing I did with this hotel information...log onto Trip Advisor and check to see what the reviews are for this hotel.

And let me tell you....I was one happy girl. Now I know you have to sometimes take these Trip Advisor reviews with a grain of salt...but there were 101 reviews and most all of them good. In fact the ones that did indicate slight dissatisfaction were for things like the room being too small...HELLO...this is Europe...and a city....you have to expect small...another cited it was very noisey...mostly street noise and could sometimes hear other guests walking down the hall. But that is all subjective stuff anyway.

The important stuff...in my opinion anyway...was clean, safe, decent breakfast and friendly/helpful staff...that's what's important to me. In all the reviews I read these items got really high praise...YIPEE. Another thing that is VERY important is LOCATION and this place has it...a 20 minute walk from the Termini train station, Metro a block away and a bus stop on the corner. The one other thing that is also important for me is the price and from what I have read this place is a really good deal. This is good news to me because I plan to arrive in Rome a couple days before the tour starts and would like to stay in this hotel so I don't have to go between 2 hotels.

It certainly seems like both my Turkey and Italy trip plans are really starting to take off!

Ciao!

Happy New Year!

Here's to another travel adventure filled year!

As far as New Years Days go this one was pretty quiet...except for the gym! I got to the gym as the doors opened at 10am and jumped right on the cardio machine of my choice. Good thing I didn't wait until 10:15 am to get there...most every machine was in use by then! And they were 3 deep at the front desk filling out membership forms.

Looks like the gym will be crowded for the next 4-6 weeks...then I predict it will be back to normal with the "regulars" there!

And now for some travel news....

I purchased my airline ticket for the Turkey trip on Saturday. CL cashed in some of her frequent flyer miles on Saturday and booked her flights in the morning and sent me her itinerary. I jumped on the Delta Airlines website Saturday night and purchased my tickets for Istanbul!!! Not cheap, but I wanted to buy them now because my gut is telling me the prices will most likely go up and not down. And it was just about the same price as we paid for last year's Central Europe flights, so I felt it was time to purchase. Now I can check "airline tickets" off my Turkey Trip "to do" list! :)

Also I just sent an email to the hotel we will be staying at in Istanbul with the tour to get a reservation for the day we arrive. We are arriving the day before the tour starts...since we hope to get over jet lag, or at least have a bit of a head start on getting over the jet lag! :) This way we won't feel like we've been "shot out of a gun" when we meet up with the tour group.

So, as it stands now we will be departing Savannah on Saturday, September 22, 2007 and arriving in Istanbul on Sunday, September 23, 2007 and the tour starts in the evening of September 24th.

We also decided on the return to stay over a night in NYC. We will leave Istanbul on Wednesday, October 10,2007, arrive in NYC that afternoon and stay there overnight and fly back to Savannah on October 11, 2007. This then gives me 3 days (Friday -Sunday) to get over the "returning home" jet lag before I have to be back to work on Monday, October 15th.

Whew...and this was just the airfare coordination. We still have to meet with CL's Turkish friend to coordinate our "extra" days in Turkey...meeting with his family and have dinner with them while in Turkey. And then the hotel in NYC and transportation to and from the various airports and hotels during the trip...it will all come together.

Once I get a handle on the Turkey trip plans then I can start doing my Rome at Christmas research...but I can't even start to look at airfares for that trip until the end of January so I can hold off on that.

I am soooooo EXCITED about all my trips this year! AND the first one is in just 11 days...4 days with my best friends in Tucson...Can't wait!

Happy Travels!