Travel day to Türkiye

A long day, but very lucky that it was easy

I have another short blog post for you, but be prepared for a longer one (and with more pictures) next weekend!

As exciting as it is to travel to a new country, I dont think it outweighs the emotion of leaving a country. Especially when that country has been your home for three months, and you have made countless new friends, and have to leave the city that you have spent two months living in with your new friends as roommates. Considering I was saying goodbye to friends who I spent every moment of the day with, I wasn’t as sad as I thought I would be when we all said goodbye infront of the taxi. Although, I will admit, the emotion I felt the most of was confused. I was in shock that I was leaving.

My one last souvenir from Anza was a bunch of shwarma wraps from Mr. Beldi, one of our favorite fast food places in town, and then we were off. We made it to the bus station (barely, our taxi driver was insane) and on our bus without a hitch. The bus drive went by quickly, due to my newfound superpower of sleeping on buses, and by the time I woke up and ate the last of my shwarmas, it was almost time to get off and make the four minute trek to our hostel.

We stayed at an official Morocco Youth Hostel, and it reminded me of all of the stories my dad used to tell about youth hostels, where the floors were separated by gender and there was a curfew that you had better be back in time for, or you weren’t getting back in. The only problem with that is Jordan thought we had booked a private room in the hostel, but turns out it was a bit more confusing than that and I ended up with my own private room on the women’s floor and Jordan ended up in a male dorm room.

Jordan set us up incredibly well for an easy travel day. Before we went to bed, we walked back to the bus station, and asked a taxi driver if anyone would be available at 6:30 am the following morning to take us to the airport, he asked us where we were staying and said he would be there to pick us up the next morning. And believe it or not, he was.

Once we got to the airport the count began. The count of what you must be asking? The count of how many times we got out passport and boarding pass checked.

We walked to the check in desk to get our boarding pass verified. One to stand in the line. The second at the desk. The man asked Jordan to try to fit his carry-on into the size checker box, he managed to squeeze it in, but had trouble getting it out again, which brought some laughter to all the other guests in line. We then get into the line to get our baggage checked. Three. The line actually goes surprisingly fast. Then, passport control. Four.

I go buy water from one of the shops. Five. We have security to sit at our gate. Six. I have to go to the bathroom, so when I come back, Seven. We finally board our flight, Eight, but at the door to the aircraft, once again they check it, bringing the total count of the day to nine times.

All jokes aside though, this has got to be one of the easiest travel days I have ever experienced. Everything went off without a hitch. Even when we had to exit London Gatwick to reenter though security, we had ample time to get back in, eat a burrito, and wait for our flight. London Gatwick CSA has stats for the number of people served and the percentage of people passed through. And would you even believe it, somehow, the first time in my life, the line I got in was the most productive out of all of them. We would have made it through in five minutes if it wasn’t for Jordan having to get his bag hand searched for having a deck of cards. Tip: if you have a deck of cards, take it out before going through security at Gatwick, apparently they really don’t like card decks there.

The flight we were on was very smooth, except for the last hour, when a drunk bickering (british) couple was placed in the empty seats behind us, and we spent the last hour listening to them saying how they were going to get arrested at the gate. Once landed security was a breeze, I think I can thank the fact that my passport control agent didn’t speak any English.

Finally through the airport, and close to midnight, we waited in the cold rain for about an hour for a local bus so we could save 20 bucks. We had made it to Fethiye, and the next morning, despite the weather trying to stop us, we would hop on a boat to Butterfly Valley, where we would spend the next month volunteering!!

xx abby