Marcy Meets the "Maidens"!

I love reconnecting with friends I have met during my travels!

And what could be better then reconnecting with past travellers? Meeting future travel companions of course!

Last Sunday I had the pleasure of meeting with Rosemary who I met on my trip to Central Europe last year.

Rosemary is from California and she has a group of lady friends who love to travel and the name of their traveling group is the "Maiden Voyages".

Lucky for me, one of the trips the "Maidens" decided to take this year was to Savannah and Charleston! So when the last week of April rolled around Rosemary and I coordinated getting together and I met with the "Maidens" for dinner in Savannah last Sunday.

Rosemary picked a great restaurant...The Sapphire Grill on W. Congress Street and the food was amazing but the company was even better.

I met 6 other "Maidens" and they all love to travel just as much as I do! Looks like I have the good fortune of meeting some fun future travel companions! I look forward to traveling with the "Maidens" on one of their trips in near future!

Here's to many Happy Travels! And here are the "Maidens"...

Wooo....Hooooooo!

I cannot contain my excitment!

I am going to have one of my pictures published in a travel guidebook...Yes...Marcy's 15 minutes of fame may have arrived...ok, so the picture may be burried in the pages of an enormous guidebook...but it's still MY PICTURE!

So, the story goes like this...

A couple weeks ago I was browsing the Rick Steves' Europe Through the Back Door (ETBD)website, no big surprise there! When I saw a post that interested me. They were looking for some photos for the 2008 guidebooks. There was a list of maybe 15 or 20 different travel topics. I perused the list and towards the bottom there was a topic that was perfect for me...Solo Women Travelers...I thought...Hey! That's me!

Then I went through my photos of the last few trips I had taken and thought to myself I really need to find a picture of me doing "something" instead of just standing in front of a monument! :)

Lo and behold I got to my pictures from my trip to Ireland in 2005. And I had gone biking while in Inish Mor, one of the Aran Islands off the coast of Ireland. There I was standing next to my bicycle with the low stone fences in the pasture behind me, with my bicycle helmet and sunglasses on grinning from ear to ear...well, why am I describing it when I can post the picutre! Here it is...

Then yesterday to my utter astonishment I got an email from ETBD telling me they had selected my picture for the 2008 Europe Through the Back Door guidebook for the Special Concerns chapter! My name won't be next to the picture on the page, but it will be in the back of the book with the page number the picture appears on! And after they receive the books from the publisher I will get an autographed copy!

I am more then THRILLED about this! And the Europe Through the Back Door guidebook is what I like to call the "holy grail" of the Rick Steves' guidebooks....it's got everything in it!

Who knows...this could be the start of a new "adventure"...travel photographer! :)

Atlas Jet...adventure flight???

I can tick off another item on my "Things To Do" list for my trip to Turkey in September! :)

Last week, on a whim I started checking the budget Turkish airlines to see if any of them had published their October schedules. I checked Onur Air...no luck, I checked Pegasus Air...no luck, then I hit the jackpot with Atlas Jet! Now just because I have never heard of Atlas Jet does not mean it is "Fly By Night Air" as some friends have suggested. I even went so far as to do a search on FlyerTalk.com (the airline equivalent of Trip Advisor.com) to find out if anyone has posted any comments about Atlas Jet. There was only one comment, but it was favorable...so I am going with it! :)

Anyway....Atlas Jet had their October 2007 on their website and a 3:20pm flight from Izmir to Istanbul with a one way fare of 49 New Turkish Lire, before taxes (which is about $38USD)...it looked good to me, especially since the only other airline with October fares listed was Turkish Airlines for a price over $100USD.

I didn't want to book it that night without checking with CL, so the next morning I called CL and she said "Go For It"!

That night I sat down at my computer and went through the booking process on the Atlas Jet English version website. When I got to the section for entering passenger names I was cruising right along, that is until I got to the drop down box for gender of passenger. My drop down choices were not "F" or "M" like it would be in English but "E" and "B". Being the "savvy" internet guru that I am (yeah, right!) I managed to get to a free translation website and when I typed in "female" and hit "translate to Turkish" a word neither starting with "E" or "B" came up. OK...type in "male"...no Turkish word starting with "E" or "B".

Now I am getting a bit exasperated, but I go back to the Atlas Jet website and start the booking process again. This time I just keep the "E" in the gender box and move on to the payment screen. I type in all the pertinent credit card information and get to the drop down menu for type of credit card. Instead of the "usual" types that would pop up in English, up comes dozens of choices all in Turkish! But many of them have MasterCard after a Turkish word, so I just start choosing ones with MasterCard at the end...nothing is working! I keep getting a error message that the transaction cannot be processed.

By now I am ready to give up...but I realize there is a 24 hour reservation office phone number I can call in Turkey or I can send an email. I decide to send an email asking what credit card selection I need to make and pray I get a response. Then I shut down the computer and go to sleep.

The next morning as I am checking my emails there is a response! Wow! less then 24 hours to reply...I'm liking this airline! The reply indicated which credit card choice I needed to make, and no, it did not have the word MasterCard in it!

I immediately go to the Atlas Jet website and start the booking process, use the credit card type selection they told me to use and Voile! I have booked 2 one way seats from Izmir to Istanbul! Of course, I left the gender drop down box as an "E" so we may be booked as "Males", but I am not going to sweat that right now! With taxes the charge for each ticket is $46 USD and some change! I think it's a pretty good deal! It will cost me more to take the Low Country Airport Shuttle van from my house to the Savannah airport then what it will cost for me to fly from Izmir to Istanbul!

And why do I need to fly from Izmir to Istanbul? The Rick Steves tour I will be on ends in Kusadasi, Turkey. The closest airport to Kusadasi is Izmir and CL and I will be going back to Istanbul at the end of the tour to spend an extra 4 days in Istanbul. So, we need to get from Izmir to Istanbul!

Now I am happy to say that almost all of my Turkey trip transportation and lodging is set. The last few arrangements for this trip don't have to be worked out yet, like the shuttle from home to the airport and then a hotel room in NYC for our one night lay-over on the way back from Istanbul...I can coordinate that in the summer. YIPPEE! Things are looking good for the Turkey Trip....now it's just 5 and a half months away....it will be here before I know it!