And we're off...

Thursday morning was an early one.  I hardly slept a wink all night, as I was fueled up with adrenaline and anticipation for the twelve day European adventure ahead.  I may have drifted off a bit around 2am, but then was up at 4:30 in order to catch my 7:00 flight out of Rhinelander.  I did better than I thought with leaving the kids, and managed to avoid the waterworks.  It helped that Nolan had really been clinging to Daddy lately and was mostly unconcerned with the fact that I was leaving.  I said goodbye to Livi the night before so she could stay asleep in the morning and wake up fully rested for Daddy.

My flight from Rhinelander to Minneapolis was rather uneventful, only lasting 30 minutes - by the time we got up in the air, it was time to come back down!  I was the first of the group to arrive in MSP, so spent a few hours reading and people watching.

When Mom and Grandma arrived, I was clued in to the almost-disaster that happened the night before.  Mom really did the bulk of the planning and organizing of this trip (she did an amazing job!) and made one final call to Celebrity at 10pm the night before we left to ensure everything was in order.  The rep went through the checklist, and everything was take care of, until he asked if we had our Turkish Visas.  This was literally the first time that anyone had made any mention whatsoever of needing a Visa to be able to get into Turkey, despite dozens of calls to Celebrity.  We would be unable to enter the country at all without this and would not be able to board our ship!  Fortunately the Visas were able to be purchased online and we avoided the disastrous mess that would've been had we arrived in a foreign country with no documentation!  Yikes!

Michelle arrived shortly thereafter, and Kristin's flight from Dallas got in right about the time we sat down for a bite to eat.  It was hardly any time at all before we were boarding our big Delta jet for the next leg of our journey - to Amsterdam.  I haven't been on a Transatlantic flight for over a decade, but I certainly don't recall the flights being as enjoyable as this one was.  We had tons of movies, games to play, and it seemed like they were constantly serving us food or drinks - even complimentary wine!  With a few glasses of wine and 2 meals and a snack, the flight seemed to zip by in no time and we were in Amsterdam!

None of us slept that well on the plane, so we all took advantage of our layover in Amsterdam to nap a bit.  Before we knew it, we were on the 4 hour plane ride to Istanbul.