Currently on a Turkish Airlines Airbus A320 en route from Istanbul to Izmir, the third largest city in Turkey and a major port along the Aegean coast.

We arrived yesterday afternoon after what was, all things considered, not a bad flight over from Chicago.  I’m traveling with a group I put together — Chris from work is along for the ride, along with ten teachers, eight from the Austin area, one from Dallas and one from Houston.  Most of us met at the airport in Austin and flew together up to Chicago.

I’ve defended O’Hare on a few occasions, stating outright that I’ve never had any real problems connecting through, and this continued to be the case.  This should not be confused with the concept that connecting to international flights at O’Hare is actually easy.  The international terminal — Terminal 5 — can only be reached on the airport train, which requires exiting the secure area and going through security once again when you get there.

And frankly, for an international terminal, they ought to be ashamed of themselves.  The only source of food is before security, so for those looking at their watches and the long line at the three security lines, it’s a choice between food and wondering if you’ll make your flight on time.  It took nearly 45 minutes for us to get through, and to say the TSA folks were rude would be an understatement.  I accidentally forgot to empty the water bottle that I carry with me (it’s refillable – I carry it through security empty and then fill it at a water fountain so that I don’t have to pay airport prices for a 12 oz bottle of water to carry on the plane).  The guy working security waved it at me.

“Oh, it’s water,” I said.  “I’m sorry, just go ahead and dump it out.”
A burly officer with a shaved head who struck me as ex-military came up, snatched it from the other guy, and practically yelled at me, “No, I’m going to take you back through and you can dump it.”  He meant it, too.  He was willing to let me wait for someone else in the group to come through so that I could leave my stuff with them, but got impatient.

“Where are they?” he snapped.
“They’re still waiting to come through.”
“Well, I’ll just take it out there and give it to one of them to dump,” he said, and stalked off.

Welcome to America, ladies and gents.  Don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.

Once we got to the gate and checked in with Turkish Airlines, we got another nasty surprise: we were all in middle seats.  And the plane was full.  I boarded in a bit of dread, but I have to say that if you’re going to get stuck in the middle seat on an 11 hour flight, there are worse places to do it than on a Turkish Airlines A340.  They’ve got a little more leg room than most other carriers I’ve flown on (on the plane where I’m sitting at this moment, I could get out to the aisle without bothering either of my aisle mates), and that fun AVOD system where you can while the flight away watching really bad movies on demand (After sleeping most of the way across the Atlantic, I finally chose Confessions of a Shopaholic over Bride Wars).  Although flights that long can never be described as “short,” I didn’t spend the last four hours wanting to get off the plane by any means necessary, like I have on some other airlines *coughDeltacough*.

We were met at the airport in Istanbul by some folks from Austin from the organization that’s hosting us — I’d been a bit nervous because I didn’t have any information about that, and so when we walked into the arrivals hall there was a moment of truth, so to speak.  Ironically, it turned out that they were getting worried about us, because it took over an hour from the time the plane landed for us to get through the long line for visas, then passport control, and then for the luggage to arrive.  “We were starting to wonder if something had happened … ”

We were taken to our hotel in Istanbul, which may be in the old city in the sense that it’s within the old city walls, but there’s nothing particularly old about the neighborhood where the hotel is located.  It is, however, on a quiet side street, which I appreciate.  We went out for a quick dinner, which lasted exactly as long as I could deal with, then back to the hotel for bed.

We had an early wakeup call, but I woke up early (4:15).  I guess jetlag will be with me for a few days, but right now … granted, it’s still 7:45 am … I’m feeling OK.  We have a long day in Izmir, visiting Ephesus and Selcuk, and then we’re flying on down the coast to Antalya tonight.  At that point, I’ll be ready for a good night’s sleep.

And now, I’m getting the usual warning about putting electronics away as we’re on our descent into Izmir.  More later …