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.
