Arrival in Turkey

Arrived at 12:15 am local time.  Cleared passport control without even being asked a question.  Went to find luggage and it was not on the carosel.  Went to file a lost luggage claim with great disappointment.  Rejoiced greatly when luggage personnel pulled our luggage from a storage room.  It had beat us to Istanbul on an earlier flight!

Exchanged money.  Located a taxi and negotiated a fare to the hotel.  Got on the highway and there seemed to be some uncertainty about the address.  We ran into very heavy traffic at 1:00 am.  There were demonstrators sitting in the middle of the highway blocking it.  Eventually got to the hotel at 2:00 am ended up paying him double because we initially had the wrong address (two of us had different addresses).  We were ok with that.

Enjoyed a quick shower and crashed into bed.  Starting tomorrow @ 8:30 am!

Sunset outside Chicago