Tuesday, June 28, 2011 - From Athens, Greece to Ankara, Turkey

I am writing from my beautiful hotel in Ankara, Turkey.  It is 5-star all the way, baby.  (I don't know what to do with myself to be honest!)  You may, or may not, have heard, but there were some more protests all around Greece on Tuesday, and there also was a general planned strike for the air traffic controllers (and others) from 8am - noon.  Our 10:30 flight didn't have a prayer of getting out on time, so Turkish Airlines rescheduled it the night before for 1:30 instead.  Our travel agents still got us to the airport before 9:00 because they were afraid of traffic issues around our hotel, which is right downtown just across from the Constitutional Square where the Parliament building and all the rioting was taking place. 

It made for a long, long day sitting in the Athen's airport and after several delays we finally made it out of there - but it was after 3:30 and thus we missed our connecting flight in Istanbul to Ankara.  It took us a little time to get our barrings in Instabul, but we finally figured out what we needed to do and where we needed to go to get a new flight for Ankara.  They got us out very quickly and we arrived into Ankara about 8:00 - 8:30 pm.  Our hotel is gorgeous - very high tech and fancy...I'm totally out of my league!  None of us had gotten anything to eat for most of the day because after we went through Athens' airport security, we assumed there would be places to purchase food, but besides vending machines, there wasn't anything.  So, when we got in last night, some went out for a late dinner, but many of us were just too tired.  So, I volunteered to run down the street to the McDonald's and grab a bunch of random stuff for random people and my hamburger hit the spot!  Funny how I can't stand the joint in the states, but something about it hits the spot during stressful international times.