Here we are on our flight from Miami to Istanbul transiting to Dubrovnik. This is the first time ever that we have purchased business class tickets. There was a time when we had banked nearly two million mileage points with American Airlines. We used those miles judiciously through years when you could occasionally snag a business class seat to Europe for 40k miles one way. Now those one way tickets can run 400k! I still found some tickets for future trips for 58k and 70k. But that is getting harder and harder. Thank goodness we are now extremely flexible in our planning.
This time, thanks to Google flight search, I settled on buying tickets on Turkish Airlines. They are cheaper than American, by quite a bit, and allow for a layover in Turkey including three nights in a hotel in Istanbul. We have wanted to go to Turkey since we took the kids to Greece in 1995. By the time we see Istanbul, we will have visited 77 countries. Not bad for two poor kids who had never traveled before we met each other and miraculously found this particular shared passion.
We “fondly” remember 44hours of traveling from Mozambique to Johannesburg to Heathrow to Gatwick to Antigua to Anguilla all in Coach! Sleeping in airports or curled up on the floor of the plane under Michael’s feet and the seats in front of us. We did what we had to do to get where we wanted to go; and that crazy path has brought us right here in this moment. Now the Chef has been by to take our entree orders, wine is on the tray, and we are settled in for a long but comfortable flight to IST and then on to the Dalmatian Coast.
Cheers, Michael!🥂
