Day 1 – in which Karen gets there (amazingly) despite an attack of “stupid disease”

It was a long, long way here. Despite lie flat pod and good earplugs, little sleep was to be had on the London-Frankfurt leg due to the elderly couple a few rows down who were clearly insomniacs and talked all night – at a volume compatible with their elderly hearing capabilities. A shower at the lounge in Frankfurt during the layover helped temporarily, but things went downhill from there and although I tried my best not to sleep during the next leg to assist with jet lag, I was pretty stupid by the time I arrived in Istanbul. The new airport, which opened 2 days before, lives up to its billing as being miles out of the city with no public transport – and holds the record for the longest taxiing in from the landing strip I’ve ever had. The passport control/visa lineup was interesting with a burqa clad group cutting the foreigners lineup by ducking under the tapes – the rest of us shuffled through the enormous lineup and had our photos taken before being released into the baggage claim area. This area was a good km away (it seemed) and is cavernous – of course our luggage was sent to carousel 23A (out of a possible 25), guaranteeing an excellent dispersion of any emboli that had amassed during the 17 hours of flying, and nearly 24 h of mostly sitting.

At the arrivals hall there was a mass of people and signs with names on them but none with mine- I had arranaged a transfer with Mozio, a German company but was half expecting it to go awry as the plane had also left Frankfurt late, and we added a good 20 mins taxi-ing in. However someone called my name (how did they know who I was?) and I was connected with a greeter so we schlepped over to the chaotic pickup area and made our way around a labyrinth of brand new highways. After many km through industrial areas we integrated into the normal awful traffic jams for which Istanbul is famous.

The hotel in the historical sector is lovely, with marble everywhere, very clean, with super helpful staff and a comfortable bed on which I made myself horizontal as soon as it was humanly possible…..

Memories of the day – great, friendly service by Lufthansa staff, having to step over my asthetic and elderly Iranian fellow passenger’s pod enroute to the loo – he barely ate and went straight to sleep soon after boarding – leaning on the TV monitor for support, finding it slid sideways and nearly falling on top of him…. and the endless new airport.