Wednesday, March 13-14, 2024
We planned a trip to Italy, Malta, and Tunisia during my spring break in March 2024 and invited my sister Chris and her husband Stan to join us. The trip started off a bit rocky. On Sunday morning, we were notified by Lufthansa that our Wednesday flight from LAX through Munich to Naples had been cancelled due to an airline cabin worker strike planned for that day. They offered us flights on Thursday, which would have ruined our plans for Naples. We booked a new flight for Wednesday with Turkish Air, and Travelocity promised to refund the cost of our initial round-trip tickets.
Chris and Stan, flying in from Montana, did not have the luxury of the flight options we had, and they ended up having to book their flight to Naples a day earlier, arriving on Tuesday instead of Wednesday. What a hassle.
We left for LAX at 8:30 AM, and our phone's navigation took us on the most bizarre route to avoid morning rush hour traffic, including segments through residential neighborhoods. After 2¼ hours of driving, we made it to our prepaid parking at the Hilton. Even after waiting what seemed like an usually long time for the hotel shuttle and then picking up our boarding passes at the Turkish Air desk (we had only carry on luggage), we had time to eat lunch.
Our first leg to Istanbul was over 12 hours long. (I watched 3½ movies--Priscilla, Barbie, The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, and half of an Inspector Poirot movie that I finished on the return flight.) It was our first time on Turkish Air, and we loved everything about it EXCEPT for very cramped seating. The food was great--stuffed pasta shells for dinner and scrambled eggs for breakfast. We especially liked the flight attendant outfits. They did ditch the hats after take-off.
Leaving Los Angeles, and arriving (I think?) in Turkey:
This was our first time getting prayer alerts on our airplane TV screen.
We've been to Istanbul before, but we didn't spend any time in the airport. This time we had a 5½ hour layover, plenty of time to wander around and pretty much see everything. The airport was very busy. In fact, since we've flown through there, we've heard of several others who had layovers there on a Europe-bound flights. The Istanbul Airport is now the second-busiest airport in Europe, after Heathrow, and the sixth-busiest in the world for international travel.
It is clean and has lots of fun attractions, like this playground for children.
I liked this positive message.
We made it a point to sample the "local" cuisine, such as this pistachio gelato (and baklava gelato, which I didn't get a photo of).
The pastries were gorgeous . . .
. . . but we settled for some average-tasting baklava and a cup of freshly squeezed orange juice.
We were traveling during Ramadan, and there was evidence of that everywhere. "Iftar" is the meal that Muslims eat at sundown after having fasted all day. Note how much food there is in each of the two options!
The second leg of the flight was 2 hours and 25 minutes. When we landed in Naples, we were able to walk right out of the passenger area--no immigration--and catch a cab. It cost us about $32 to get to Hotel San Michele (pronounced mi-KAY-lay), where we had a NYC-sized room that was big enough for the bed and not much else, but with a decent-sized bathroom that had a bidet in addition to the toilet, which turned out to be standard for the rest of our trip (the bidet part).
The first-floor landing had this gathering room with 60s-era décor and some funky embellishments.
It is always fun to meet up with loved ones in a foreign country. As mentioned earlier, Chris and Stan had flown in a day ahead of us and been out sightseeing on their own all day. It turned out that their room was right next to ours, so after settling in, we all headed out for pizza at a place just a few blocks away, L'Antica Pizzeria Da Michele, which is supposed to be one of the best pizza places in Naples and was prominently featured in the movie
Eat Pray Love. There was a line of at least a dozen people waiting either for take-out or for a seat in the full restaurant. We were excited to have the Pizza Experience of a Lifetime.
Unfortunately, this wasn't it.
I watched
Eat Pray Love a few weeks ago, and it
was fun to see the restaurant in the movie, and I was almost relieved to see that the pizza looked floppy and mushy just like this ↑.
The next evening we went to another restaurant that had been recommended to us that was across the street from the one above. The selections at Pizzaria Trianon were similar (just okay, not great), but at least they also had Schweppes. (As you can see, I brought along my bobble-head brother to share in the fun.)
It had been a long day--actually two days with the time zones changes. Time for bed!
(Bob) I actually liked the pizza in the Pizzeria Da Michele. It was the second place we went to the next night where it was so full of liquid that the topping slid off the pizza that I didn't like. Turkish air food was good, as you mentioned, but the leg room was horrible, probably the most horrible long flight I've had for legroom. Schweppes was one of the highlights of the trip - I didn't like the taste of Coke in the countries we visited.
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