From Manchester to Istanbul

On a grey, wet Monday morning in June we left our frıends' flat in Manchester and set off for the airport. For once we'd packed quite well and only had one big backpack each plus a small day pack and, of course, my ukulele. The flight to Istanbul was pretty uneventful apart from the rather superior, imperious attitude of the female staff of Turkish Airlines. The plane meal was better than normal though so it wasn't all bad.

It was pretty late when we landed at Ataturk Airport, about 10pm, and we were in a hurry as we wanted to use the public transport to get to our hostel and it stops running around midnight. Unfortunately, the staff hd a dıfferent plan for us when they "lost" my big backpack. This was a pretty amazıng feat of stupidity as my backpack is a horrendous shade of shocking pink and is further ornamented with a disgusting floral pattern.So, pretty easy to spot ın a crowd and presumably quıte hard to lose. I was told that my bag was probably still in Manchester Airport - not a happy start to our travels.

My "beautiful" pink backpack.

On the road again

It's midnight in Manchester, England and we're watching TV round our friends' house and listening out for the sound of invading mice. Our bags are in disarray in the spare bedroom with clothes, travel adaptors and toiletries strewn about. But my little green ukulele is packed so everything else will surely fall into place. Tomorrow afternoon we will fly out to Istanbul for the first stop on our odyssey across Europe, Turkey and Georgia (the country, not the state in the USA.)

We learned to play cribbage round our friends Ian and Katherine's flat the night before we flew to Turkey. We hope to while away the long hours of boredom playing this game as we no longer have anything to talk about being married and all!