Hasta la Vista, USA

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  Chicago, Illinois
Saturday, September 18, 2010

Let's face it: shopping back home is just easier.  You know where to go, you know your size, you know where the sales are -- and it's just more comfortable.  As such, I end up saving up most of my shopping for trips home and need to hit all manner of shops whilst there.  This time around, I made it to plenty of shops -- enough to fill up our two original suitcases and one more that we'd toted along expressly for that purpose.  Unfortunately, trying to get everything jammed in and make sure that none of the bags ended up overweight was a difficult feat; we spent hours packing, unpacking, and repacking everything the morning of our flight.  

In the end, it all fit, and all the bags seemed to be the proper weight, so we quickly showered and made it down to the Dane for a final US meal, complete with beers and Badger football.  As it turned out, we needn't have rushed through lunch: check-in at the airport couldn't have been easier (and they didn't charge us for our extra bag!), nor faster.  We were through all of it in less than 10 minutes, meaning we had plenty of time to relax before our flight (and that Konrad could watch the end of the Badger game).  

The flight to Chicago was smooth and speedy -- a good start to our trip.  The longer flight from Chicago  was uneventful and then we were back in London -- only a few hours from home!  Once again, Heathrow was unimpressive -- and obscenely crowded!  I've never seen more people crammed into an airport in my life!  We did our best dodging and weaving and turned up at our gate with about 20 minutes before we were due to board.  Unfortunately, the flight was slightly delayed; fortunately, we didn't have to wait a terribly long time (sitting on the cold floor, nonetheless, as there weren't nearly enough seats).

We spent most of the flight home sleeping, and then we were back on the ground in Istanbul -- where it was warm and lovely!  Our flight got in a little after 6:00pm, but we had to wait nearly 2 hours for our bags to turn up (which we were very nervous about given all our recent purchases!).  After hitting the duty free, we lugged the bags out to the Havas which drove us speedily to Taksim.  Konrad heroically carried the bulk of the bags home from there -- but it wasn't time for us to relax yet -- we still had to pick up young Diego from Sara and Amanda's place before we could rest for the night.  

Once we'd accomplished that, we were able to sit back, put up our feet, and take stock of our surroundings, trying to catch up on what we'd missed over the past few weeks -- all ready to dive back in the next day.  Ah, back to the grind.... 

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