Day 13 & 14 - Istanbul & The Longest Thanksgiving Ever

Our final morning in Malta started in the five o'clock hour, as we'd ordered a large taxi (I wasn't getting back on a bus anytime soon) to take us to the airport at 5:30am for our roughly 8:30am flight out of Malta.

Clearly I can eat even at 5:30am...a giant cannoli no less!

We got there very quickly, and were relaxing in the very pleasant Malta airport...when Rich saw that our flight on Turkish Airways to Istanbul was delayed. This was a major issue, as it would cause us to miss our connecting flight from Istanbul to NYC by about 15-20 minutes. So my dad and Rich rushed downstairs back to the ticketing agents to see if we could get re-booked on an earlier flight out of Malta. Despite being the first in line for re-booking, they spent nearly two straight hours at the counter in line trying to re-book us on a flight back to the US that would allow us to catch our connecting flights out of NYC the next day to the west coast.

Unfortunately, there were NO available options to get us to NYC in time, so they kindly agreed to fly us to LA instead...which was where Rich, Ry and I were headed anyway. However, my parents would have to get a flight to Seattle, as they were meeting my brother there. But because things took so long in line, we all had to sprint to immigration and our gate while they held the flight for us. The flight to Turkey was without incident, but as soon as we landed, we had many more re-booking tasks ahead of us to sort out.

Once there,  we had to wait in our second line of the day at the very unhelpful Turkish Airways customer service desk trying to find out how to get our emergency visas so we could leave the airport. We ended up figuring it out on our own using free, spotty airport wifi. This required us to stand in line #3 to pay $150 dollars for last minute visas that are STILL UNREIMBURSED by Turkish Airways after weeks of paperwork and emails.

Once through immigration and customs (our 4th/5th lines of the day), we had to stand in a 6th line at the airport to get our vouchers for transport to our hotel. The van arrived within 30 minutes, which was nice, and we had a private shuttle each way to a nice hotel (better than the pricey one we'd paid for/never checked into in NYC). Thankfully, line #7 at the hotel wasn't too bad, and were in our rooms within 20 minutes of getting there.

Dinner was included, and it was quite delicious! We were one of only a few people in the entire restaurant, which is always kind of nice. Not for the staff of course, but for the stranded, hungry Hawaiians who had been forced to fast for lunch! We were starving. ;-)

Unfortunately, by the time we got to the hotel, it was too late to hit the Grand Bazaar and introduce my parents to Turkish Delight, which would have closed within minutes of catching a cab there (in traffic, 20 min. away). The Blue Mosque was also closing as well. :-( I was very disappointed, as I'd thought those sights would be the only upside to being stuck in Istanbul for the night. However, we had a great hotel, delicious meals there for dinner and breakfast, and Turkish agreed to route us to LA instead of NYC, as we would have missed our connecting Thanksgiving day flights to the west coast from JFK. This was actually VERY helpful, as our Delta flights were non-transferable, and we lost both our hotel night and five one-way fares in the chaos.

I spent about three hours that night calling, texting, emailing and messaging Delta trying to get my parents re-booked on new flights from LAX to Seattle. The process was terribly stressful, as they wanted to charge them about $400 per person for the short flight from LA to Seatac. <2-hour a="" an="" and="" at="" bought="" busy="" buy="" canada="" could="" d="" doing="" even="" felt="" five="" flight="" forfeit="" get="" had="" have="" holiday="" in="" instead="" insult="" it="" just="" let="" like="" little="" managed="" meaning="" more="" move="" new="" off="" on="" over="" p="" per="" person.="" price.="" profit="" re-sell="" ridiculous="" s="" saved="" say="" seats="" seattle="" sneaky="" so="" their="" them="" they="" those="" though="" tickets="" to="" transfer.="" two="" us="" we="">I also had to book them a last minute, overnight hotel at LAX for Thanksgiving night, as we could not get them a flight that same evening for less than what it would cost to buy the airplane from Delta. Thankfully, we found a great rate at the nearby airport hotel with the Hilton...which had gorgeous room and helpful concierges who made sure they were well looked over. My dad is still a pretty savvy traveler, so we weren't too worried and knew they'd be fine until they got to see Joey in Seattle.
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After a long night dealing with this all, but a lovely night in our hotel, we awoke to this river view and a few minarets, that Ryan said looked like missiles. ;-)

Our transfer back to the airport took us along the same unexpectedly gorgeous freeway displays of decorated greenery early the next day, so the only souvenirs we got were a few boxes of Turkish delight for friends, and some candy for Ryan. I'd wrongly assumed a small bag of candy wouldn't be that much in Turkey, but surprise! His little bag of gummies was $6.50 US (since I kept coaxing him to load up and get a few more). But c'mon...it was his Thanksgiving Day meal!!! Like any loving parent, I had to make sure he had gummy fruit, gummy sharks (for protein/the main course), and gummy bears for desert. ;-)

Our flight was packed, but we managed to survive a nearly 16-hour flight to LA thanks to the decent food and entertainment on board. Ry did especially well, as he now takes a half a Dramamine pill to help with air sickness, that also has the same effect on him as a roofie (so he knocks out cold for 8 hours).

Once we got through immigration, it was a quick farewell to my parents and a very fancy, classy convenience store Thanksgiving dinner at the airport (sour fresh mango slices, fries, coffee) before dashing off to get our rental car. And because waiting was the theme of the day, we spent the next two hours waiting for our rental car (which ended up being quite dirty, but you could have given us an old, crippled horse at this point, and we would have been grateful to just keep moving on our journey). We were delirious from a lack of sleep, and were worried about Rich's entire extended family waiting for us down in San Diego for Thanksgiving dinner!

Although we should have landed in LA at noon if we caught our original flights...we did not even leave LAX until nearly 8pm that night. So we didn't end up getting to San Diego until just after 10pm, long after everyone had gone home. We felt horrible not getting to see everyone, but the lengthy travel nightmare we'd been on couldn't be helped, and we were just happy to have gotten there with minimal pain/suffering.