There comes a point, when you are traveling a quarter of the way around the world, that you just give up trying to figure out what time it is. Your Fitbit says 10, that clock says 5. You just woke up, but now the sun is setting. A beer seems like the most reasonable solution, although you quickly discover that you are no longer as adept at combining alcohol with sleep deprivation as you were in college. When's the next flight? Do we even have a gate yet?
Kevin and I flew to Venice via Istanbul. The first leg of the journey was a red-eye with two free meals, unlimited free alcohol, and a staggering amount of free television and movies. I watched Book of Life during dinner and Mad Max during breakfast. Between the two I watched a few episodes of the ill-fated A to Z because the mother was in it and a sitcom seemed like an appropriate thing to drift off to. I think I slept for two or three hours. Kevin slept for less. We arrived in Istanbul for our five-hour layover bedraggled and scrambled.
The Istanbul airport is enormous, although it did not seem that way at first. Off the plane we were ushered into a fairly small, overly bright, incredibly dingy waiting area with only one bathroom. Half the stalls were backed up, there was a distinct lack of toilet paper, and even the line for the men's room snaked out into the lobby. We made the best of it then decided to go in search of a better bathroom, which we thankfully found.
Once there I managed to make myself feel somewhat more human. I'd had enough foresight to pack some dry shampoo, deodorant, exfoliant, a toothbrush, and toothpaste in my carry on. It was actually a decent substitute for a full shower, especially since I was just going to get on another plane soon. Then we wandered around the enormous mall inside the international terminal in the Istanbul airport and found a place to get a beer.
We went in search of our gate much too early. Five hours is an incredibly long layover time. But we did eventually make it on to the next plane. They served us dinner again, which I ate even though I couldn't decide whether or not I was hungry. The second flight was just long enough for them to screen Ant Man, which I watched while listening to the Hamilton soundtrack on my tablet. They didn't really mesh, but I can tell you that the movie looks pretty ridiculous.
Flying home was the same thing in reverse, with a shorter layover, and day and night reversed. On the way to Venice the sun was up about 4 hours that I knew of. On the way home it rose as we were boarding the first flight and didn't set after we'd gotten our bags in Dulles. My point is that trans-continental travel is not so different from time-travel. Everything all goes to hell, and you just have to hope you can readjust to the new clock quickly enough to get back to life.
By the time I fell into my bed, I'd been awake for a solid 22 hours (not quite the 24 I'd initially calculated, but you try doing math on no sleep). The good news is that my jet lag affected me only enough that I was an hour early for work the next morning. And then I was right back on my normal schedule. Turns out my dad was right: flying west is much easier.
I'll talk catalog the rest of our vacation in the coming entries. You know, the parts you probably actually care about. But the actual act of traveling is just so surreal, I had to write about it. It's so cool to think about how small the world has gotten, that we can make the trip from DC to Venice in less than a day, even when you account for time changes (we took off at 11:30 pm DC time and landed at 11:20 pm Venice time). And it's astounding the things we put up with to do this. The searches and tiny seats and smelly bathrooms and complete lack of personal space. There have been some new horrendous plans put forward recently for mashing more people on an airbus. Perhaps you've seen the honeycomb seating and the two-level ones. Personally, I'm hoping that they just start stacking us in cubbies that we'd at least be able to lie down in, a la The Fifth Element.
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