Wait it out

Day 9:

Update #1: This morning was pretty relaxed we got up early left the dock and took the water taxi to the car where we drove to the airport.

Update #2: Today we are headed to Istanbul and then to Cappadocia where we will be staying in the stone hotel. Overall the travel time today is about 12 hours from leaving the house to finally arriving at the hotel. 

Update #3: The flight to Istanbul was beautiful, however, landing in Istanbul was bumpy and for no reason. There was not a cloud in the sky however the descent onto the landing strip was about the rockiest thing we have experienced in a while. 

Update #4: Scratch how bad landing in Istanbul was, landing in Cappidocia was worse. There was a huge storm outside. For a while we couldn’t even land at all. We circled above the airport about 4 or 5 times before finally landing. The landing was honestly a little scary. And when we finally did land there was a round of applause for the captains. When we landed it began to pour. The issue with this is that we weren’t landing at a gate, we were landing on the tarmac where we would run to the nearby door to get into the airport. The captain told us that we were going to sit for 5-10 minutes and “wait it out.” However, the rain continued after that. So they let us off and we ran to the airport. That was not even the worst part. It was a very small airport so we grabbed our luggage right after entering the airport and headed outside to find out car. At this point the rain was pouring down and the roads were flooding. We had to make it across the street but there was a huge pool of water. So we did what any sensible person would do and we walked right across to the other side. This water reached up over my ankles completely soaking my converse shoes and socks. To make it even worse my mom dropped her luggage right into the water. We reached the car and scrambled in as the rain continued to crash down. We were drenched, from head to toe there was not a dry spot on our body.

Update#5: After taking a deep breath we gathered ourselves and began our drive to the hotel. It was beautiful, well what we could see of it anyways. It was still raining and continued to do so all the way there. 

Update #6: We arrived at the hotel. It is super cool, I have attached some pictures. It is carved out of stone, and beautiful. I made friends with a cat! We ate some dinner just right upstairs because we were all relatively tired and needed to go to bed early for our balloon flight tomorrow!