Our flight to Istanbul was at 11:45am, so we got to the airport 4 hours early. I’m not sure exactly why we got there *that* early, but we did. We stored our souvenier bag in the locker at the airport, and then went in search of breakfast.
Turkish Airlines occupies a large section of the Frankfurt Airport, and once you’re inside it’s a little tricky finding out which gate is the right one. Of course, being so early doesn’t help-because they simply don’t know where the bird will be more than 2 hours before the flight!
Once we got to the gate, we had a bit of a problem because the credit card Dennis used to purchase the tickets was not the one he had on him (the original one suffered from a fraud thing so he had to close the account). The Turkish Airlines lady was just not happy, and for a minute there I thought she wasn’t going to let us on board! But, eventually, she called the manager and it was settled.
Flying Turkish Airlines was okay. Some dudes did not bath prior to the flight, so there was a definite stench inside the plane. It would have really helped if they had turned the a/c on, it was probably 85 degrees in the plane! The poor people sitting next to the stinkers!
When we took off, the a/c kicked in, and the smell deminished. Lunch was served, and I was SO glad I ordered the vegetarian dish. It was veggies with rice, a roll, and chocolate mousse. I ate it all and was still a little hungry.
People clapped upon landing-interesting how excited they were. I guess I take it for granted that the airline will get me to my destination in one piece & on time! We were herded off the plane, and sent to customs. It took an hour to get through, not too bad!
When Dennis & I were walking out to the curve to flag a taxi, we got heralded by a dude with a badge. He said he was working at the airport and could get us a shuttle. I was suspicious, but Dennis seemed to be relieved to have somebody taking care of us. The maze of taxi’s outside the airport *was* a little daunting!
They charged us 10 Euro’s a piece for the shuttle-basically it was a rip-off. But, at least we know it is a reputable business since they are connected with the airport. (We should have negotiated a price, but we didn’t know better). For where we were needing to go, it should have been closer to 10 Euro’s for both of us! Turns out the Taxi driver had no idea where our hotel was, and he had to ask several people for directions. Intrepid Travel usually picks these out of the way, smaller joints, so we were smiling when the guy was driving around in circles!
The hotel is surrounded by little alleys filled with small local restaurants. The restaurants hire dudes to stand at the menus and rope people in to eat. It’s amazing the things they will say to catch your eye. Once you look at them, they’ve got you. The trick is to simply ignore the comments, unless you really are hungry in which case you might want to listen to their speels.
Once we checked into the hotel, we spent a bit of time walking around, found the entrance to the Grand Bazaar, the spice market, and the cisterns. The weather slowly deteriorated as we walked, so by the time we returned it was a drizzle. We ended up dining at the restaurant just kitty corner from the hotel. It’s a fantastic little place. We had their specialty, Turkish raviolis, lentil soup, and sis kabob.
The food was delicious. They fed us a lot of bread, and turkish tea. The waiter, Isa, was a fantastic entertainer-he had great stories and was a riot to talk to. He spoke 5 languages, and very good english! He was familiar with American slang, since he went to the US for university. So far, we loved Turkey. It was organized chaos! We were thrilled about the tour, starting the next day.