Greetings ya’ll!

It’s been a while since my last post here.

I’m writing this from the sort of sad generic “international lounge” at Tampa International Airport. We’re heading to London tonight in Virgin Atlantic’s Upper Class cabin (my Delta SkyPesos still have some value).

As some of you know, I started a new (now old) job in 2018 that had me traveling very frequently internationally from mid-2018 until March 2020 when the world shut down for COVID.

Along the way, I started losing enthusiasm for this project. Too much travel / activity. Too little time (or desire) for writing.

We did, however, travel to China in late 2019 when seemingly the biggest concern was protests in Hong Kong. I still have a post from the summer of 2019 (a second trip to London) and others from the China trip that are in “draft” mode at this moment. I plan to edit and post them in the coming days as I have time during our current adventure.

I’ll also fill in the gaps in 2020 (nothing other than trips to our house in North Carolina), 2021 (a round trip journey from Florida to New England by car), and 2022 (when we traveled to Canada and around the Great Lakes region, as well as our first overseas trip as a family since the pandemic started). We also managed to visit NYC a couple of times, travel to our place in NC, and also buy a boat (finally!) earlier this year.

This year is a real return to the world. Emerson is now 13! Probably closing in on the 157 count too (I need to do the math). And, so it’s time for another quinquennial adventure around the world — our 3rd time circumnavigating the globe as a family.

Pretty awesome!

To top it off, we plan to head back to South America and Antarctica around Christmas.

Anyway, I’m back… now let’s get going.

That requires some explanation: I’m starting a new job in a new industry in mid-June with a company based in England. Like most of my professional career, I’ll be working remotely from my home office in Florida, as well as traveling pretty extensively — including probably monthly trips to the UK once I’m established in the role.

So, this week will be a preview of that (and my future professional life) for me.

Since there wouldn’t have been time to participate in these meetings, fly home, and then immediately return to Europe, I rearranged my travel so that I’ll meet Libby, Emerson, and Mom in Frankfurt, Germany on Friday morning. From there, we’ll be off on a drive through Germany and France. We’ll spend a couple of days in Paris. Then we’ll fly to Dubai (despite it being summer and the holy month of Ramadan, neither of which are optimal for travel to Middle East). Finally, we’ll end our trip in Tokyo, which will include a visit to Tokyo Disneyland (something that thrills the girls).

I should mention this flight as it was my first time in Virgin Atlantic’s Upper Class. The airline recently updated the cabin on their A330 fleet, which now has three rows of single seats that are angled forwards (so, you take off and land at kind of a 45 degree angle to the direction of the plane). The seats and bed (though short) are very comfortable. The food and drinks were just alright. And, while the space in your “suite” / seat module is used very well, it’s used a little too well for my liking. That is to say, there’s very little room on either side of your seat and essentially no storage space other than the overhead bins. Overall, I like Delta’s business class product better — even the much maligned 767 product.

All told, we say on the plane for about 3 hours after our scheduled departure time before finally taking off for London. So, we flew to London–on what turned out to be kind of a tired and less than comfortable plane filled with lower class and obnoxious Brits returning from their Disney holiday–fretting over our abbreviated layover. You see, I’d purchased two roundtrip tickets for us: a pair of roundtrip flights between Orlando/London on Virgin Atlantic and another between London/Istanbul on Turkish Arlines. 

So what? I’ve done this to great effect in prior years. The difference this time was that I “only” had 5 hours between flights, which should have been plenty of time to go through UK border patrol, collect our luggage, go through customs, check-in with the next airline, go through security, and be ready to board the next flight. Now, thanks to the delay in Orlando, my five hour cushion was down to two and neither Virgin nor Turkish had to do anything to help us out should those two hours be insufficient. 

Mercifully, we were at London-Gatwick, which is a far less chaotic and more easily navigated airport than London-Heathrow. Immigration, baggage claim, and check-in were all very speedy. So, we ended up with about 30 minutes to spare, which have us just enough time to get breakfast lunch.  

We enjoyed our flight aboard a relatively new Turkish Airlines 737-800. The service was much better than aboard a US domestic carrier: from passing out Turkish Delights and serving a multi-course meal to the free adult beverages and cabin stewards heaping Turkish Airlines games and toys on Emerson — all on a low cost, fairly short (3 hour) flight in economy. Thus, I give you Paul’s Inverse Law of Airline Service: the more ridiculous the airline seems on first, ignorant blush; the more likely the service is to be actually superior (e.g., Garuda Indonesia). 

We were greeted at the airport by the agent for our car service. He promptly whisked us to our Mercedes van for a ride to our hotel on the other side of town in a neighborhood called Sisli at little more than the cost of a taxi for four times the comfort. 

Turns out, the Marriott Sisli is also spectacular. Given my status, we were given upgraded rooms overlooking the city and Bosphorous and access to the executive lounge for free meals. More Turkish delights to greet us to:

Libby, Emerson, and I ordered (surprisingly affordable) room service before heading to bed. We munched on our food while overlooking the city from our room:

We made it as planned, and found ourselves excited but tired. 

Today’s box score: +1 country (Turkey, in Europe) 

Ok, I’m wildly behind with posts, but I’ll catch up. That said, this summer starts now.

Off to London for our connecting flight to Turkey. Flying on the upper deck of this bad boy tonight:

Virgin Atlantic 747-400

More tomorrow from London (maybe) or Istanbul…