day 1

first and foremost, WE MADE IT!!  and are at a gorgeous W Hotel, will send pics later.....but we didn't make it snafu free!  of course, right?!?!  let's see....it started with lauren almost missing her flight Philly to Frankfurt.  luckily, she ran FAST and made it with only 5 minutes to spare.  phew!  i had a tight connection in DC but i made it, can't say the same for my bag though :(  somehow i knew that was going to happen.  good thing i brought a carry on!  next, when lauren and i met in Frankfurt, we had to stand in about 5 different lines and no one wanted to help us.  they have great customer service, lufthansa all the way baby!  after we arrived Istanbul, we then had to wait in ANOTHER very lovely Visa line.  once we arrived the counter, the cute Turkish boy told us we had too many Visa's and sent us yet to ANOTHER line!  AWESOME!  he did tell us though that after we waited in that line, we could come right back up to his counter.  pretty sweet right???  WELL, guess again!  after the lady at the Visa counter had no idea why he sent us over, we went back to his counter while a foreign lady screamed at me pointing at her watch.  she screamed and screamed and we didn't understand one word....but she was MAD!  so the Visa boy said something to us in Turkish and we nodded and said yes and finally got the stamp!  woohoo!  next we come to baggage claim.  lucky lauren found her bags ASAP while i stood there looking for my poop brown bag to roll by.  NO LUCK.  hopefully it will be here before we board the ship or i am SOL.  then we had a roller coaster ride in the "taksi" and almost got in a few accidents.  but we're alive and it's been so worth it just from the hotel we're at!!  i just KNOW we're going to have more great stories for your entertainment!  stay tuned!!