Fri, 18 Apr 2003

author Tim	location Somewhere over Europe
posted 17:11 EEST	section Europe2002/Europe/UK/England/London/Working in London 1 ( all photos )

Off to Heathrow ( 6 photos )
The train to Heathrow was reasonable, if slow, and upon arrival we faced no huge queues to check in. Worked out quite well, actually.
We had a bit of a look around the shops before deciding that there wasn't really anything of great use there, but we are probably going to get some extremely cheap booze on the plane which will be a bonus - Turkey is cheap, so we need to take advantage of that after England!
Soon enough it was time to board our flight to Turkey!

author Tim	location Somewhere over Europe
posted 17:11 EEST	section Europe2002/Asia/Turkey ( all photos )

In the Sky Again, Then Istanbul ( 1 photo )
(Continued from Working in London 1)
No major problems so far - we are about an hour from the end of our flight to Turkey and all is well!

(More at 19:16 EEST 19/04/2003, from Gen¨türk Cadessai 29, Laleli, Istanbul, Turkey (SULTAN) )
The remainder of the flight went just fine, we found the staff to be courteous and the food much better than we had expected.
Upon touch-down, we floundered around the airport for a little while before locating the Visa desk, where we each forked over Fifteen Euros for our three month visas. I got the feeling that the Turkish don't like the Americans much, as their visas cost a whopping $100 US for one month. Ouch.
Luckily we had some Euros left over from last week's trip to The Netherlands, as these have come in handy. I suspect in a few years time, the governments of many countries may have to consider adopting the Euro as at least a semi-official currency, as it is accepted all over the place here. Perhaps that has something to do with the fact that one euro translates into 1,750,000 Turkish Lira, about the price of a cup of coffee.
While waiting in line for the Visas, Liz ducked off and became an instant millionaire at the ATM, withdrawing 100,000,000 Lira for use around the place. This turns out to have been a good move.
We then wandered on to baggage collection after passing passport control with no problems, where we once again were suprised at how quickly our bags were available. Perhaps only Sydney airport is inefficient in this regard?
Next task was to try to get to our hotel. I had rang the tour company the day before, asking whether to expect a hotel transfer, since they only typically offer them two days before the tour starts (ours starts Tuesday), but we had been told we would get one. The answer was that there might be one, just look out for a sign, otherwise keep your reciepts.
Well, we wandered around the arrivals section looking at lots of strange signs, but none had our name on them. The closest was a person who approached us directly saying he was from Fez tours. Nothing registered then, but Fez tours is the Turkish partner of On The Go tours, so we suspect that was our transfer. I had been specifically told to look for an On The Go sign, otherwise it might have rung bells in my head.
Anyway, we jumped in a cab, showed him the address and were rapidly taught how the Turkish drive. Badly. We scrambled in vain for the seat-belts but none were to be found. Instead, we held on and tried to admire the scenery as we hurtled towards central Istanbul at roughly twice the speed limit.
We had to walk the last little bit to the hotel as the traffic was pretty heavy, but he got us there ok. However, we think he ripped us off, claiming (and showing us) that we had handed over a smaller note than I thought I did. Only later did I realise that the notes were definitely all the same - they had come from the ATM! In all the hustle and bustle we had also forgotten to get a reciept. Live and learn, and expect to get ripped of by taxi drivers, especially in countries which have huge amounts of zeroes on their notes.
We settled for a little while in our room on the sixth floor of our hotel for the next few days - the "Sultan Otel", located fairly centrally, complete with semi-English speaking concierge (better than none), a lift which has the door attached only to the building itself (stand back as five floors whiz by!), and a cosy, clean yet quite old room.
After gathering our thoughts, we wandered off in search of food. This is where Turkey really excels. There is of course the ubiquitous doner kebab, rendered relatively healthy by the fact that over here it is a common family meal rather than a greasy beer-sponge after a big night out. We haven't yet sampled too many different types of food, and last night we just located a local family-run kebab shop, and had a great tasty meal.
After a slight diversion home, we retired for the night.

(customised)