As I type it’s coming up on 10am ET Saturday morning. I’m in the British Airways lounge of Terminal 7 at JFK. I took a redeye last night on JetBlue, landed around 8:30am local time and got to the lounge about an hour later. Not bad for a terminal change and going through security again. Plus I don’t know this airport very well and it always takes a minute to orient myself. But it was relatively easy and security wasn’t crowded. Deplaning actually took the longest!

Dan is still in Raleigh. He will meet me here this afternoon, say 3ish. We have a 6:30pm flight to Heathrow, a 4 hour layover, then on to Istanbul. If all goes well we should be in our hotel no later than 6pm Istanbul time.

So I have a good 4-5 hours to kill before Dan gets here. I didn’t sleep much on the way over so may find a place to curl up here in the lounge. Or not. One of the reasons I didn’t mind the long layover here is it’s nice way to decompress and start to disconnect from every day life and work: forced to do not much at all. Darn. But I figured before I venture into nothingness I’d get started here. I have a whole photo file system I set up for these blogs and I’ll get that done, not that it’s that time consuming. Had some coffee, juice and oatmeal for breakfast. I love the glorious feeling of an unstructured day and not knowing what you’re going to do next until you decide. So we’ll see. .

A few photos of this lounge:

The main room as you enter.

I’d read about the fountain in some reviews of this lounge. It is a nice touch and the area above it brings in a lot of natural light. And oh by the way, in case you missed it: yes, there are reviews on lounges. Dan has introduced me to this whole travel subculture. I can’t decide if it’s intriguing or just bizarre.

 Primary food and drink bar, with a juice bar off to the far left.

Alcohol bar as well as just water, snacks, etc. There’s also more lounge area behind me and to my right but you get the idea. It’s a pretty nice lounge, despite all the reviews complaining about how outdated it is. If you don’t have to sit at a gate and buy expensive and unhealthy airport food, I’d say you have it pretty good. And I do.
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It’s now Sunday morning, just after 9am London time. We had an easy flight over and both managed to sleep a few hours on the plane. We’ve been in the lounge since about 7:30am and boarding should start in the next 30-45 minutes. I’ve been reading a book I started on the plane last night, “That’s What Friends Are For” by a friend of mine who writes under Kenneth Sean Campbell. It’s fiction but memoir-like about a group of gay friends at the beginning of the AIDS crisis in San Francisco starting 1980. I always enjoy his books because the stories are relatable, I know some of the people he’s acknowledging in the beginning, and I read it with his very distinct voice in my head. And the landmarks are correct. The book I finished yesterday afternoon was a new author to me and I won’t read him again. It was one of my go-to genres – murder mystery or legal thriller, in this case the latter – set in LA. Not only was it not the best writing, he kept getting landmarks wrong – streets leading places I know they didn’t, Disneyland in LA county instead of Orange, and other incorrect references; it was just annoying.
Enough of that. After I’d finished that book yesterday sitting where I am in the photo below, I went back to rewatching Game of Thrones, preparing for Season 7. Finished 5 and about that time Dan showed up, roughly 3pm. The lounge had been pretty quiet most of the day as indicated below. He had access to the first class lounge because of his miles status so we went to check that out.


The view I had for the early afternoon until Dan showed up just after 3pm. The lounge was nearly empty when I got

The photo above and below are of the first class lounge. Not all that much different, just a little quieter. I didn’t notice until after I took the photo below that Dan’s standing at the buffet bar.

 

 We sat there for a little over an hour then went for a “pre-flight supper” that they offer business class flyers. The food was very good, better and more options than you would get on the plane. And eating first allows you more time to sleep on the flight, which is why they give you the option. We sampled a bunch of stuff as shown above: on the small plate, corn and bean salad; arugula with onion, feta and grapefruit; and in the little cup some rice, salmon, cucumber and sriracha. Top plate included pork belly which was the best dish of all, and cashew chicken which was just OK. Bottom plate more pork belly (we really liked it), swordfish, roasted carrots, asparagus and cauliflower that were all pretty good.

Some decent cheese and cookies for dessert, with a little jam. They had this other thing for dessert that sounded good on paper but was awful. It was a sugary fried thing – it was so bad I don’t even remember – it was like biting into oil soaked dry sponge, and not in a good way. The photo below is the food line on the right and the dessert table on the left.
We landed on time and made it to this lounge pretty fast. The lounge is crowded and that makes me self-conscious about taking photos so I didn’t. Plus we’ve been here a bunch of times so if you’ve traveled with us on prior trips, you’ve been here already :)
We should be boarding soon. See you in Istanbul!
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 We had business class seats on the connection and sat in the first row. Dan loves being the first person off the plane! The seats are identical to economy except the middle one is turned into a table of sorts which comes in handy and is just less crowded. Plus you get food. But the best part about business class we learned as we were getting off: a Fast Track pass through customs. We had no waiting, walked straight up to the window, and by-passed the line with a couple of hundred of people probably.
 This was the lunch, most of which is pictured below. We both got the salmon and linguine and, while tasty, didn’t photograph well. That chocolate tart orange bitter sauce thing? Amazing. I almost licked the bowl.
 Our first glimpse of the Black Sea, with Bulgaria in the foreground, and coming up on Turkey below, with the Bosphorus Strait in the middle if you look Really Carefully.
I do love getting these messages when I turn my phone back on!
 Highs all week will be in the mid-80s, a good 20 degrees less what we had in Sacramento last week.
 If you read our Pre-Departure entry, I mentioned how excited Dan was about this hotel. It’s the Conrad Istanbul Bosphorus. They confirmed yesterday we would have a corner suite with a view. There weren’t any additional upgrades available when we got here. We’re not complaining. This is by far the nicest hotel and nicest room we’ve ever stayed in. Living area below. Not pictured: a half bath off the entrance.

A nice little welcome package. When we came back to our room later in the evening they’d done a turn down service with more water, slippers placed strategically on each side of the bed on these little mats. Pretty adorable.


No complaints about that view.

All kinds of toiletries, and a TV screen in the mirror!

We unpacked and cleaned up a little then went to the lounge. We just had some light snacks for dinner, we weren’t really hungry after that big lunch on the plane.

Dan likes the staircase in the lobby.

Above and below: some of the neighborhood close by.

 

We went walking along the strait and there were lots of ferries, boats, and restaurants.

We went into town a block and walked several more. There were lots of people out and about, 95% of them or better local. Dan noticed no one wears shorts here, men or women. Oh well, that’s pretty much all we planned on.

We came across this park that was entwined with something that looked like ruins, ancient city walls or something. The park was built into a series of hills and there were lots of retaining walls and they looked Really Old.

 

This wall in particular looked pretty old.

One of those times the photo doesn’t do it justice. The background was quite pretty. I have a feeling that’s going to happen a lot.

Again, you can’t really tell how steep this drop was – one of those retaining walls I mentioned earlier – and the severe case of vertigo that was setting in.

Not a bad view from our bedroom at night either.
When we went to Paris in 2014, several times that day we said “can’t believe we’re here.” This was that oh x10 at least. As soon as we got out of customs into the main part of the airport it was clear we weren’t in Kansas anymore. The language – written and verbal – very different from anything we’ve experienced. While we’re getting by so far, English is not as predominant here as it’s been other countries we’ve gone. There’s a frenetic pace to the people – traffic especially, very aggressive drivers, lots of honking and yelling.
The cab ride from the airport to the hotel was an adventure. We met a local woman in the airport who offered to share a cab with us because she was going in the same direction and could help ensure the taxi driver didn’t gouge the poor locals by going the long way around. Now remember, it’s Dan we’re talking about, who always has Google Maps running, and has this very fun story about correcting a limousine driver in Belgium, and who got after a Raleigh cab driver on one or our first trips there together for the very thing this woman was saying she would prevent. So the chances of that really happening are slim-to-none. Somehow we took her up on her offer anyway. Very long story short: we won’t be doing that again. Our read of the cab driver when he dropped us off at the hotel was she made him absolutely nuts. And Dan ended up having them change course at least once; she spoke English, the cab driver didn’t. And that’s enough about that :)
We will have 4 days on the ground here and are so looking forward to it. We love history, and there were 3 big and very different civilizations here, all with different religious undertones, if nothing else indicated by the number of times the city changed names:
  • Byzantium – around 700 BC (pagan)
  • Constantinople – capital of the Eastern Roman Empire, circa 300 AD. It roughly held that name (with other variations) for the next 1500+ years. (Christian)
  • The Ottomans conquered in 1453 and it’s essentially been Turk ever since. (Muslim)
  • It became Istanbul after WW1 in 1923 after Turkey became a Republic.
That’s enough to set the stage. It’s now 11pm Sunday Istanbul time. Tomorrow we start in the old district and will hit the Hagia Sophia and Blue Mosque for sure. Looking forward to sleeping in a bed for the first time since Thursday night! See you tomorrow…

 

 

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