Yesterday I described my experiences as an American trapped in Istanbul since the failed coup attempt on Friday. The reality of what I experienced on Friday during the attack really sunk in last night, and I spent most of the evening alternately fretting and bursting into tears of homesickness. I haven’t felt this homesick since I was 11 and at Girl Scout camp, away from home for a week for the first time. At least we finally got to eat dinner, a sumptuous buffet with a mix of traditional Turkish dishes and a salad bar. No fancy drinks though; water was all we got. I suppose to encourage you to drink from the mini bar.
This morning we tried to contact the airlines to change our reservation from the Atlanta flight over to a flight to Toronto, since the current rumor is that the FAA ban will be in place until August. Unfortunately, they can’t transfer a final destination over the phone. So we got instructions from the hotel clerk (who spoke decent enough English and apparently spent one summer working in Myrtle Beach) and struck out for the subway Metro, which has a direct route to the airport. For reasons we couldn’t begin to guess at, today was fare free.
We stood in the (thankfully much MUCH shorter today) ticket reservation line and learned we couldn’t transfer our flight until the Atlanta one on the 21st was officially cancelled. I think Turkish Airlines scheduled it based on wishful thinking. Because of that, we also couldn’t get a refund.
We’d have to buy brand new tickets all over again.
Easy enough, right? Except our credit card was declined at the counter, because we were no longer supposed to be in Turkey. I know that credit cards take their country based purchase security seriously, and it’s our fault for not informing them of the extended stay, but still! We had other things on our mind! My phone was working for wifi calling, and one hasty call to Mastercard later, we learned that the hold would be in place for another 3 hours. And then we realized I’d left my wallet back at the hotel, so we couldn’t even try my AmEx and see if they were in a more charitable mood.
So there was no help for it. Back to the hotel we go.
The Metro line has a stop right inside the airport, much like MARTA does for Atlanta, and from the station it’s a relatively safe one kilometer hike to the hotel. Still, the entire trip takes about 45 minutes, and trudging back and forth between the hotel and the airport isn’t our idea of a good time. The airport hotel we had stayed in last Friday, in comparison, is about a 5 minute walk outside the airport and technically attached to it.
Back in the hotel being covered by Turkish Airlines, we called up the credit card companies and got all our cards extended for Turkey usage another few days, with extra permissions added in for large purchases.
Then we booked our flight to Toronto, and a second leg on Delta from Toronto to Atlanta. $3900 extra to get us home. That’s going to burn through all of our emergency savings combined. Hopefully Turkish Airlines will refund us a couple hundred dollars from our ticket to Atlanta when that flight is inevitably cancelled, but we’re not counting on it.
With our flights finally settled (we hope), we now have to get our hotel stay extended another day. The husband has trudged off to the airport alone this time, since I’m trying to get some actual work done. (My boss has been amazingly supportive and understanding of the situation, but of course I feel obligated to work remotely since I used up all my vacation days for the trip last week!)
So the current plan is to pull off our own mini Canadian caper on Wednesday, and be back in Georgia by midnight. Crossing our fingers that the flight to Toronto doesn’t get cancelled, too.
Update: We did get our passports back from the hotel when we explained we were going directly to the airport to renegotiate our flights. We are going to refuse to give them back. They can keep the copies they made.