So, we made it. No denying it’s a long flight! Tullamarine deserted at 2 am except for passengers from our Emirates flight that included two of my cousins and their friends. Off to Paris to celebrate a 50th birthday leaving husbands home. Five women ready for a good time! Off on time. Lots of families, babies and all. A full plane. But all well-behaved. Perhaps because of the individual in-flight touch screen entertainment that Emirate claims gives the most choice of any airline! I completed series two of Downton Abbey between Melbourne and Kuala Lumpa and series seven of Thirty Rock between KL and Dubai. I’m unsure whether two breaks of an hour or so make it better or worse. Twenty eight and very muggy in KL. Time to walk the length ( short) of the airport but not to wander around the rainforest. A milk shake sized peppermint tea was nice. A chat with Maree and Janine. Ten degrees hotter in Dubai – 38. Goodbye cousins. Into the airport through security – but we haven’t been anywhere since the last security check! We stepped into what is effectively an enormous shopping mall. I was too tired to appreciate anything about it. Mostly Westerners wandering around. Some men in white robes and head-gear, some women in black, but not many. We had to walk for what seemed like miles to our boarding gate. Time for McDonalds. Well, we had the chips. Patrick had a hamburger. Last leg was four hours and fewer people. A lot of locals, calling out to each other across the aisles. Shia women (according to Joe) all in black but the scarves were sheer and garnished with sparkly bits. Covering what must be enormous coils of hair. Looked so top heavy but very glam. Here we are, exhausted but soldiering on.
Patrick lay over four seats and slept all the way. I looked out of the window, following our flight path on the screen as we flew over Iraq. Clear blue sky. Not a cloud. You could see forever. Flat white flood plains with the lines of the delta clearly visible, were these the southern marshlands? Unbelievably flat, brown, barren. Nothing there. Straight roads, very occasionally a tiny settlement. The screen showed Basra and I thought I saw a town, but too small surely. A river – the Tigris? The screen said Baghdad but there was no sign. But there was Mosul – spread out below us. Then mountains. Rugged, ancient folds of rock. You could see how they had weathered the ages. Jagged escarpments looking like fortress walls. Brown, red, grey. Not a speck of green. Amazing.
Over mountains we passed into Turkey. More mountains. Still amazing. Finally some big expanses of water. A man-made dam.
Still not much green around but more settlements in between hills. Then finally some green bits. On over big slabs of flat cultivated land – yellow and brown squares. Some green squares. More and more towns. Flying over the landscape from Once Upon A Time In Anatolia.
Finally a great view of our destination before we seemed to fly out to sea forever- would we ever turn back? No. We weren’t turning around, we were landing straight ahead. Out into the the heat and chaos of Istanbul airport. Queued for visas, queued for passport control, through the doors to a sea of people holding up names of the people they were collecting. Found ours and off we sped, sort of, peak hour, so lots of waiting, lane changing, honking of horns, past a fountain,
a fish market, people out strolling, eating or just sitting under trees, along the sea side, dusk falling. Over an hour on the road. Dark by the time turned into the tiny, cobbled streets of the old city. How do the drivers manage these impossible corners, these steep inclines? Then we were here. At the Hotel Niles. A glass of Turkish Apple tea and a piece of Turkish Delight to welcome us.
To our rooms. Children’s a palatial two level affair. Ours a tiny box. We unpacked. Then remembered this was temporary and we were being moved next day! Look out the window. The place is hopping. 7o clock on a Friday night. We are in the middle of a garment making area. Out the window we can see a shirtless young man putting the final touches to a white leather bag. Up the tiny street men are putting bundles of clothes into cans. Others are sitting at tables drinking coffee. Refreshed by showers we were ready to welcome Eleanor and Ruby when they arrived at around 9pm. Brown and happy and excited. Full of anecdotes about their travels. So lovely to see them. Only an hour’s flight for them, coming from Athens. By 10.30 Joe and I were done for so we left them and collapsed in our little box bedroom. They went out for kebabs and the had drinks in the rooftop bar at the Hotel Niles. Here is our little street in the middle of the night when I woke up on our fist night, my body clock not adjusted – 2am Istanbul time, 9 am Melbourne time.
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Location:Yeni Devir Sk,Fatih,Turkey
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