Among the gifts Turkish Airlines gave us – a piece  candy called  Turkish Delight,  a steaming hot towel – was a bag of necessities for travel, including a small toothbrush and a tiny tube of toothpaste.  I must have brushed my teeth five times last night.   Four a.m. and we’re in the shuttle, waiting for others so we can go to the airport.

That old full moon is directly overhead at 1:22 a.m. here at the Hilton Garden Inn in Istanbul.  One of the clerks told me the hotel is brand new, only the fifth day.  Lovely shower but it leaked.

Turkish airlines was very impressive – pleasant staff, food and service the way it used to be on U.S. flights. Food and drink free and hot towels to boot. The adventure began when the captain came on about 9 hours into the flight to say that we were landing at Gatwick in London to check a problem. Electrical problem apparently involving smoke at the rear of the plane. We missed our connection to Tirana and are staying in the most luxurious hotel I’ve ever stayed in, courtesy of Turkish Airlines. It’s almost midnight here in Istanbul and we have to leave the hotel at 4:30 a.m. to go to our flight. Using my Kindle so not much more except to say that we had to get a visa to leave the airport – $30 each.

Tomorrow I’m going on an adventure without my usual travelling companions. Instead, I’m travelling with my niece, Julie. We fly out of LAX at 6:45 p.m. on Turkish Airlines and arrive in Istanbul Wednesday evening. Then we have a short flight to Tirana, Albania. The whole trip takes about 16 hours, but what with getting to the airport early, the time change, and waiting…waiting, it will seem like much longer. The only things I know for certain are that we are arriving in Albania on Wednesday night and on Friday evening we are flying to Rome because, why not?  Saturday we will have dinner at one of my favorite restaurants – Otello alla Concordia, near the Spanish Steps. I hope I can find the place again. I’ll try to keep you up to date on our adventures, but the task may be too technologically difficult for someone of my advanced years. I hope I’m properly attired for Albania and for the cold and rain.