The bags were gone.
Not delayed. Not misplaced somewhere.
Gone — the way things disappear when you’re in a country you’ve never been to, in an airport the size of a small city, surrounded by signs you can’t fully read and people who may not be especially motivated to help you find them.
My worst fear came true.
This was my introduction to Türkiye.
I don’t travel light. I travel prepared. And the thought of being in a foreign country without my luggage, was disconcerting to say the least.
Every traveler has a fear they don’t talk about. Mine was this.
My sister is smarter than the fear. She’d put locators on both bags before we left. While the airline staff offered us something between a shrug and a sympathetic tilt of the head, she was already tracking.
The bags existed. They just weren’t where they were supposed to be.
There’s a specific kind of frustration that lives in airports. It’s not clean. It’s the compound kind — you’re tired, you’re disoriented, you’ve already done the hardest part of the journey, and now there’s a problem with no visible solution and a clock running somewhere in the background.
I felt all of it.
And I let it write the whole city.
Before I’d stepped outside. Before I’d felt the air. Before I’d seen a single street or eaten anything or heard Istanbul in its natural state — I had already decided.
This place and I were done.
There was no coming back to Turkey after this visit.
We found the bags. Eventually. No thanks to the airline.
And Istanbul, when it finally got the chance to introduce itself properly, was….
Well….extraordinary.
I walked the city every day (one of my favorite things to do when I travel). My sister found us accommodation right in the center of everything — the kind of spot where the city happens around you, not somewhere you have to commute to get to. The streets were alive in a way that’s hard to describe without sounding like every other travel piece you’ve ever read, so I won’t try here.
I’ll say this: I came back a second time. Different people, different energy, even louder fun.
We stayed in the same spot.
The airport almost won.
One bad hour — not even a bad day, an hour — in a fluorescent-lit arrivals hall nearly erased a city I would grow to love.
That’s how quickly we write things off. That’s how little it takes. One hard moment at the front door and we convince ourselves we know everything about what’s inside.
You don’t. You never do until you actually go in.
Next: Istanbul doesn’t ask if you’re ready. It just starts.