Sitting down in the family room, watching La La Land, sipping a Four Pillars Chardonnay Barrel Gin (yum) and thinking that I’m ready to go.

The house is clean, the fridge is empty and nothing is out of place. I’ve hopefully set up a lamp to come on for a few hours every evening, however technology does get the better of me often, but I could possibly have figured this out.

This morning after visiting Mum in hospital, I went to a money exchange in Eastland and traded in some of my hard earned cash for some Israeli shekels, Singapore dollars and Turkish lire. Always interesting to check out the currency from other countries with the shekels being very colourful adorned with faces of people I don’t know. I might look that up when we’re whiling away the hours at Singapore and then Istanbul airports.

Packing, repacking and then adjusting a few things in the suitcase has taken up some time but I think I’m organised with everything I need. One scarf? Two? One for the plane and one to drape around my shoulders? Buying one at the airports is a distinct possibility. The scarves in Turkey and Singapore are glorious so maybe I’ll just grab one there, or possibly one in each airport. We’re stopping over for five and a half hours at each airport. The airport at Istanbul will be the old Ataturk one (uninspiring) with the new one coming on line with Turkish Airlines the day after we pass through. We’ll get to see that one on the way home, with it’s amazing rooftop mimicking the Grand Bazaar.

Bruce has very kindly offered to be our transport to Tullamarine in the morning. Three very excited ‘mature’ ladies will be flying out at 12.55pm. Fingers crossed all goes well with our connections. Starting the journey with Qantas and transferring to Turkish Air will be interesting.

Thanks for coming along with us on our adventure. We’re so looking forward to this adventure and we hope you’ll get a bit of an idea of how we’re going by following us on this blog, my first!

Di, Cath and me, Gennie, are off on an adventure to Israel in just under three weeks. The excitement level is rising!

Last week we found out that our flights needed to be changed due to the new airport being opened at Istanbul, Turkish Airlines, who we are travelling with needed to cease all flights for twelve hours to make the change from the old to the new airport at Istanbul. Of course that was exactly the window that we were arriving in Istanbul after our flight from Singapore. So…Turkish Airlines organised for our flights to be brought forward twenty four hours without any cost to us.  One would think so!!

That means that we now leave on Thursday, 4th April, just after midday. A few quick changes to work commitments and leave arrangements and all was set. We did however have to arrange for an extra night’s accomodation before the tour starts, so Paul, our trusty Flight Centre agent, organised an extra pre tour night at the same hotel we would be starting the tour from in Jerusalem.

We’ve organised a get together at the Healesville Hotel next week to chat about some very important things, like, money, adaptors, phones, vouchers, transfers, what to do during the layovers at Singapore and Istanbul..and more!