Istanbul July 20-21

Istanbul July 20-21

On the morning of Saturday July 20 I traveled from Iznik back to Istanbul for my flight to Chicago. But when I got up and checked my flight details, I discovered that I had misremembered the flight departure time. It was not at 10:00 pm, the time of my original flight from Istanbul to Amman, but rather at 2:00 pm.

It was too late for me to recover and take an early bus from Iznik to catch the first ferry of the day from the Yalova ferry terminal. I had to wait for the 11:30 ferry, which as it turned out left late and only reached the Yenikapi ferry terminal in Istanbul at 1:00.  That did not leave me enough time to get to the Ataturk airport before the 2:00 flight closed. I reached the airline help desk at 1:45, but it was too late, even though the departure of the flight ended up being delayed for 45 minutes.

Fortunately the lady at the airline help desk was able to get me on the same flight the next day. I ended up having to pay a penalty of 100 US dollars.

There are worse things in life than having to spend another day in Istanbul, and that afternoon I explored the city for a while, before checking into a hotel for the night.

The next day, Sunday July 21, I got to the airport on time for the 2:00 pm flight to Newark and then an onward flight to O’Hare, which arrived at midnight. I took the subway to the downtown bus station, arriving at 1:30 am. I took advantage of the free wireless internet at the bus station to get caught up, as I waited for the bus to Dubuque that left Chicago at 6:15.