September 11th.
We all have a story to tell.
Gary and I were on a Princess Cruise ship with our friends, Ed and Liz. We had already visited Barcelona, Monte Carlo, Florence, Naples, Venice, Athens and Ephesus. On the afternoon of the 11th we had just returned from a tour of Ephesus when our cabin neighbors shouted over the balcony to turn on BBC news. We quickly turned on the TV and saw the second airplane hit the second tower.
What did we think at that moment? It was unimaginable................ and difficult to appropriately react. It was like the moment was frozen into something that our minds couldn't fathom. It wasn't until later that we realized that we may be in danger in a foreign country. The ship quickly left to its final destination of Istanbul where we were greeted with men on the pier holding huge guns and scuba divers ready to surround the ship for protection. Satellite communication had shut down. Dinner that night was a somber experience.
Originally, the plan was to spend a day in Istanbul and then fly from Istanbul to New York and then to S.F. the next morning. Because air flights in the U.S. were curtailed, we had no way to go home. The Princess Cruise Line kept us on the ship for two additional nights before chartering a plane from Shannon Ireland. When we boarded the plane we had no idea if or where we would be allowed to land in the U.S. so we were told that the people in Ireland were preparing to house us for the night if the plane could not continue. When we landed in Shannon and the captain said that the plane had been refueled and we were going to continue and be the first plane allowed to land at JFK, all we could do was cheer and give thanks. After a very long flight we landed about 2 a.m. the following morning.
I can't express what it felt like to see only one runway lit at JFK. We were the first airplane that was allowed to land that morning. After a rapid walk through Customs we were taken to a hotel where we got a few hours of rest. Later that morning we returned to JFK to an unbelievable sight of thousands of people standing in lengthy lines (many of them taking 7 to 8 hours to navigate because of the heightened security). When we finally boarded the airplane for S.F. and we lifted into the air, my mind will never forget the sight of huge billows of smoke that still rose from the site of the towers.
Thanks for sharing your experience, Janice. It must have been very somber, indeed, to have heard about the 9/11 events in foreign territory! You brought the feelings flooding back to me. It's something none of us will ever forget.
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