I left San Diego on Wednesday morning…flight was on time, I had a nice nap, landed in Houston on time, and had a productive three hour layover. Tracy Houk texted me though…she’s captaining the USA 50s team and we were to have met up at the Istanbul airport. Somehow her flights were changed, she wasn’t notified and she was going to arrive in Antalya at 3am…if all goes well that is…(I’m going to meet her there, so I hope she made her connection in Istanbul). I assured her I would arrange for a pickup and then got on the plane to Frankfurt.

The plane left a little late, but made up the time in the air, so I had 90 minutes to make my flight to Istanbul, just enough time…till we sat on the tarmac for 40 minutes waiting for planes ahead of us to de-ice…there was SNOW on the ground in Frankfurt and it was chilly, 17 degrees fahrenheit (I mistakenly thought it was celsius till I saw all the snow..). It’s a looong way from the USA arrival terminal to where I was to depart for Turkey and security was slow. I made the flight win 1 minute to spare and thought I was home free…I had 2 hours to make my plane in Istanbul. However, the flight was late by 30 minutes, and I had to get my visa, clear customs (long but fast moving lines) and then gather up my bags and recheck them with another airline. I made that flight by about 2 minutes…and realized just as I entered the plane that I failed to pick up one of my bags in Istanbul. The helpful staff at Ali Bey persisted in helping me find it and it will be in Antalya airport tomorrow morning. I am relieved, since it has my camera charger in it!

I landed in Antalya and the ITF bus had left 5 minutes earlier, and the next one was at 11:30pm…in three hours. However, there were 7 of us and we managed to get a bus for only 11 euros each. It was cozy but we all made the hour drive ok.

The rooms have wifi this year, a real convenience over past years.

Most players arrive tomorrow, I’ll post more photos starting on Saturday.

Photos below leaving San Diego, a fishing boat on the Bosphorus and snow in Germany.

Friday update: I retrieved my bag from Antalya, thank you Lufthansa and Atlas Jet! I was less successful last night (early morning today actually) in retrieving Tracy Houk, she missed her connection and arrived this morning with many other American players. Alls well that ends well.