We are home

We are home, not with out some difficulty, but home. We are two of the most inspected people on this earth. In Turkey there are 2 inspections at the airport. The first one is as everyone walks in door and then another one at the gate. In Bodrum we had two inspections to get on the plane. We got to Istanbul and called the hotel to pick us up. “Sir, you have no reservation. Do you have a confirmation number?” Yes I do and I have a confirmation email. They have no record of this. They had an open room, so they picked us up and all our luggage. Did i mention luggage, we went with 2 bags and 2 backpacks total. On the way back, we had five bags and 2 backpacks. Anne was in charge of spreading the US government's economic stimulus package to Turkey. I was also bringing back two rugs.

We go to the hotel and had to go through another inspection. We are up to three.Yes, an X-ray at the door of the hotel. I gave the desk clerk my email confirmation. He apologized and sent us to a room. This was about 11:30 PM. We had a wake up call to meet the flight for 03:30.

Back to the airport, two more inspections (count is now 5). We checking in at the counter and were told we had 1 too many bags so we had to pay a fee. Off to the ticket counter and paid 103 TL, not bad, a good deal. Back to check in again, we give the clerk the card, “I am so sorry they did this wrong, I will call them”. Back to the ticket counter, and now the fee is 332 TL. My guess is that she only charged us to go to Amsterdam rather than all the way to Houston. Still, not a bad deal.

We are on the plane and the flight is uneventful till we get to Schiphol. A large team of Dutch passport people are waiting at the gate. I have never had this happen before there. They checked each and every one of us( count is up to 6). We make to the Schiphol gate only to be inspected again (7), but they won’t let me pass. They wanted the form that showed I had paid the excess luggage fee in Istanbul. No one had said I would have to produce this ever again. Thank goodness I had not thrown it out. Anne and I dug around in the back pack and found it. I finally passed and boarded the fight.

It was not crowded, so we all could spread out, and get some sleep. We made it Houston a bit early, all the bags arrived, rugs too. We passed passport control uneventfully, then we went to customs. We were told to go to “special x-ray”. We were met by a nice agent there, who looked at our customs declaration. We checked that we had been in a rural area and been to a farm, as we had. All our shoes had to be cleansed/disinfected (8). So out come the shoes, she proceeded to disinfect all our shoe bottoms, and sent us on our way. We get to the car, the battery is dead. The car park came by and gave us a jump. It started promptly and we paid and left for 3809 Linkview.

When we got home we had a strange desire to be x-rayed before we went in the house.

Outside of that, the trip home was very uneventful. I don’t think Osama Bin laden has this much trouble when traveling.

Anyway we are back!