Welcome to Turkey!

Good evening!

Robert's steak and chips

My HUGE hamburger with onion rings and chips!

But first, let’s finish up London!  Last night, we decided to eat in the hotel’s restaurant, and went downstairs about 8 pm.  Robert ordered a sirloin steak, which came with fat chips (fries) and I had their hamburger – ½ pound of beef, and served with tomato and onion and lettuce, and was WAY more than I could even eat and then, add the skinny chips (fries).  The food was excellent, and we very much enjoyed the meal.  Then back upstairs to repack/reorganize, and set the alarm for an early morning wake-up call.

Everybody knows that we like to make sure that we don’t ever have to rush for an airplane.  We did that once in our youth, and didn’t enjoy it then; would hate it now!  So … Boy, what a l-o-n-g day!  First of all, there have been some labor stoppages recently in London, which affected the trains and tube severely.  Wild stories of people taking hours to get home; sometimes walking!  We ordered a taxi to pick us up at 6:45 am and take us to Victoria to pick up the Gatwick Express train.  (Because of the labor unrest, the trains to Gatwick were cut to every half an hour, from every 15 minutes.  We were aiming for the 8 am train.)  Taxi came right on cue at the door, and whisked us off to Victoria in something like 15 minutes!  Amazing!  So right there, we were running early.  Our tickets were good for any train, and we only had to wait on a freezing platform for about 20 minutes for our train to come in for the 7:30 am run.  Piled in, bag and baggage and at least the train was warm!  Arrived at Gatwick about 8:05 am – for an 11:45 am flight.

The Pegasus check-in was still closed, so we decided to get some breakfast.  Upstairs to a restaurant called Giraffe; very cute.  I ordered their breakfast burrito, which was scrambled eggs with a very spicy chorizo and jalapenos, and peppers.  Robert ordered sides of mushrooms (which were HUGE!) chips and bacon (which in the U.K. more resembles Canadian bacon). 

R's MUSHROOMS, chips and bacon

My smaller but very spicy burrito!

Both dishes were excellent.  Then downstairs again, and amazingly, Pegasus was open!  I was more than a little concerned about their hand-baggage rules – but Robert was able to take the camera bag as his “personal item” and the carry-on (with computer) came in at 7.4 kilos … and their max was 8 kilos, so it was close! 

Cleared security very quickly, although I did have to take off my shoes – low SAS boot-types, which are REALLY hard to put back on … but all went well and we settled into Gatwick’s lounge area.  Finally, about 10:40 am our flight gate was posted -- #18, so out we went and down to #18.  Checked in there, and the plane was already in (yeah!).  It was a 737 standard set-up – 3 seats across one aisle.  We both had aisle seats – me in row 2, and R in row 3.  The nicest thing was that the center seat was clear for both of us, which was nice!   Plane left right on time, and took almost 4 hours to get to Istanbul.  Nice flight, and we arrived in a light rainfall.  I actually wasn’t sure of the time change, but it is three hours, rather than the two I had thought. 

There really wasn’t a bad line for immigration at all, (contrary to the “other” Istanbul airport…) and I think we got through in probably 15 – 20 minutes.

Comfy hotel room

View from our balcony back toward the airport

(Although I do have to admit, that there must have been more than a couple planes landing around ours, as by the time we left, the line was really getting long!)  Wow!  Our suitcases – BOTH of them!! – were already on the cart, and out we went into the Istanbul night.  Found a taxi out front of the airport, and literally – in 3-4 minutes, we were at the brand-new Hampton Inn.  We’re in room 1620 (6^th floor) which also has a very nice covered balcony!  Nice to see the view of the airport in the background!  And, we actually can get some of the Australian Open in German on TV!  Nice to see some tennis, even though R tells me it all happened yesterday…

Settled in and headed downstairs to find something for dinner.  We also asked the man at the desk to call about our rental car, which we are to pick up tomorrow.  Find that they are actually in a building off-airport, just a few minutes from our hotel, so plan to walk over there tomorrow morning to get the car and then come back and check out of the hotel. 

Directed around the corner to several open restaurants … although there is a Starbuck’s directly connected to the hotel, and a Papa John’s Pizza across the street. 

Me at BuDonor

Salad and dips with pita; excellent!

R's veggie donor

My Fajita donor ... I know, they look alike!

Nice man cutting mystery meat!

So much for Americana!  Went instead to BuDoner.  Nice space, but there was a lot of smoking on the enclosed patio – and when the door would open, it would, of course waft in … We started with sharing a salad, some dip, pita bread, feta cheese and a tomato tapenade.  That was followed by my fajita donor and R’s vegetable donor.  Well … traditionally I don’t do mystery meat, but that’s what a donor sandwich is … it’s carved off a slab of cooking meat.  However, being firmly of the “don’t ask - don’t tell” school, I am asking that NOBODY tell me what I had for dinner tonight!  Many thanks!  At any rate, it was good and mine came with grilled peppers and onions; R’s with mushrooms and onions.  As it turns out, we do have a small amount of Turkish Lira, which came in handy when the credit card machine wouldn’t take either of Robert’s chip cards. … Huh … but dinner all in, including four small bottles of sparkling water was all of $14.79!  Wow!  By this time, it was almost 9:30 pm and I wanted to get upstairs to blog and publish and get on to tomorrow!

So!  We have arrived safely and pick up the car in the morning!  More tomorrow!

Lots of love,

m

xxx