We've made it to Heathrow! It's about 12:30 pm local time. The flight was long (around 9 hours) and I couldn't sleep at all so I'm really tired now. Because we ended up on the earlier flight, we didn't have our pre-selected seats and we were in the middle section. I had thought that British Airways would be a nicer airline, but I'm not impressed with them, particularly because they rescheduled our flight to the next day without even addressing the fact we had a connecting flight. We can't find a lounge to spend our 6 hour layover, so we are trying to snooze on a hard bench, in this cold, loud airport (there are constant annoying announcements). Susan called her family in London, and we later had a cup of tea in a cafe. I ... read more

Note: I am recreating this travel blog in 2017, based on my trip journal and memories. I really enjoy re-reading my previous two travel blogs so I wanted to be able to do the same for this Turkey trip. We are incredibly excited about our first major overseas trip! We leave tomorrow, flying from Vancouver to London, then on to Istanbul. Istanbul sounds so exotic, and we will be so thrilled to be there. We originally booked a trip to Egypt and Jordan, but the Arab Spring intervened, so we have decided to go to Turkey instead. My parents went to Turkey a number of years ago, and really enjoyed it. We are spending a few days in Istanbul, then joining Peregrine Adventures' "Treasures of Turkey" 15 day trip. This will be the first time we ... read more