I'm here. This is gonna be a good vacation.
The flight was delayed for over three hours, apparently because Turkish Airlines didn’t have a plane- which sounds like a bad joke set up, but apparently wasn’t. Spent the last hour at the gate with Alex, a charming (also handsome) 6-foot-2 businessman from Turkey by way of North Carolina, who ended by giving me his number and trying to convince me to come to his brother’s wedding in Izmir and eat his mom’s home cooking. Question: famed Turkish hospitality or regular old hit-on? Both?
Out like a light all flight (yaay me). Biggest scare of my life at the airport, when the ATMs rejected my card. Completely terrified. Wandered about helplessly trying to figure out how to make an international phone call with no money. An airport information guy saw me, took pity on me, brought me to a back office, gave me tea, and let me use the phone free. Turns out I was just trying to withdraw too much at once, to pay that 300 Euro fee and still have spending money.
By then I was something like three hour slate, long missed the trip orientation meeting. Got to the hotel, checked in. Hotel is in a fantastic location right on the tramline, heart of the old city, walking distance to the bazaar and Aya Sofya. First introduction to the Turkish cheap hotel habits of having all the hall lights be on motion sensors, and those little bitty teeny tiny elevators with only one set of doors, so you can actually feel the wall of the elevator shaft sliding by while you go up. The combination is cool, if creepy.
Crazy hit on by a guy hawking a pub/restaurant. Made me a little napkin flower. Heh. Met my roommate- Londoner named Kelly. Her dad is in the diplomatic corps, so she was born in Ankara but hasn't been back to Turkey since she was about a year old. Highly cool. Group is mostly Aussie, Kiwi, young and well-traveled, tan, mid-twenties, a tidge rowdy. Ate at a pretty nice restaurant, much waiter-banter, much raki drunk. I can already tell that I'm going to like the food here drastically better than Israel, though I do hope we pick cheaper places in future. After: dervish show in the big park in front of Blue Mosque, all lit up for the night.
Out like a light all flight (yaay me). Biggest scare of my life at the airport, when the ATMs rejected my card. Completely terrified. Wandered about helplessly trying to figure out how to make an international phone call with no money. An airport information guy saw me, took pity on me, brought me to a back office, gave me tea, and let me use the phone free. Turns out I was just trying to withdraw too much at once, to pay that 300 Euro fee and still have spending money.
By then I was something like three hour slate, long missed the trip orientation meeting. Got to the hotel, checked in. Hotel is in a fantastic location right on the tramline, heart of the old city, walking distance to the bazaar and Aya Sofya. First introduction to the Turkish cheap hotel habits of having all the hall lights be on motion sensors, and those little bitty teeny tiny elevators with only one set of doors, so you can actually feel the wall of the elevator shaft sliding by while you go up. The combination is cool, if creepy.
Crazy hit on by a guy hawking a pub/restaurant. Made me a little napkin flower. Heh. Met my roommate- Londoner named Kelly. Her dad is in the diplomatic corps, so she was born in Ankara but hasn't been back to Turkey since she was about a year old. Highly cool. Group is mostly Aussie, Kiwi, young and well-traveled, tan, mid-twenties, a tidge rowdy. Ate at a pretty nice restaurant, much waiter-banter, much raki drunk. I can already tell that I'm going to like the food here drastically better than Israel, though I do hope we pick cheaper places in future. After: dervish show in the big park in front of Blue Mosque, all lit up for the night.