Day 2

The flight was much better than we had anticipated.  We both dozed off and on for most of the flight.  It was very bizarre getting on a plane at 10:20 and within a number of hours of flying it is daytime again.  We were flying into Istanbul where the time difference is 8 hours from Chicago.  Once we arrived in Istanbul, we were quickly greeted, lined up and counted to make sure we were all there and then marshaled through the airport since we were late getting to our connecting flight.  So there was no down time of walking around the airport getting the blood flowing again.  It was straight to the next flight.  We boarded the plane at around 5:30 pm and sat for about 1/2 hour before they told us all to get off the plane.  There was a volcano that erupted in Africa and the volcanic ash was in the path of our flight.  There were a number of flights that were cancelled so there were many people looking for lodging until we could fly out again.  We went from visas, to passport control, to waiting for a long time to determine where we were going to be staying for the evening. 



Istanbul Airport





Can't use the lights unless you put your
key in light switch.



 We ended up taking small buses with crazy drivers to the Grand Anka Hotel which is not as "grand" as the name would make you believe.  Personally, it reminded me of the "Psycho Hotel".  I was grossed out by it and I realized that I must still be a bit 'high maintence'.  I even took some pictures of the place because it creeped me out.



I had to take a pic of this because when I got brave enough to shower - I pulled back the curtain to reveal whiskers in the shower.  At this time Heather was so tired that she had fallen asleep and didn't have to see the grossness of this.  So being the nice sister that I am I cleaned it up and showered.  The entire time I was showering I could hear people talking which was another bizarre incident. 





This is why I heard voices.  There was an opening into the next room's bathroom.  You can see that there are pipes and a clear shot into the other guest's bathroom.  That is just weird to me, but if that wasn't enough to scare me I was convinced there was a trap door in our floor where people will come through in the middle of the night to rob us or take us.  I wasn't sure which one, but neither sounded very good to me - oh yeh - Heather is still sleeping this whole time while I am left to protect us both in this crazy place.


Trap door in our hotel room!

After showering and waking Heather from a deep sleep we went down stairs for dinner at 10:00.  Our meal consisted of chicken, brussel sprouts, rice and french fries.  We all laughed about the french fries as we were not sure how they fit into the meal, but we assumed that they served us the french fries because we were American.  Don't all American's like french fries???

Day two was unexpected, but interesting to say the least!