Up, up and away!

11th July - great day for a holiday, folks. A quick trip up to Warsaw courtesy of LOT and then off on Turkish airlines for the 1 hour 35 minute flight to Istanbul! Turkish Airlines were just great - new aircraft, still pretty squeaky clean, and the staff were courteous and helpful. Plus, as this was our first non-budget flight for oooh..... ages.... we enjoyed the lunch ..and the wine!

Arrival in Istanbul was 'interesting'. The first hurdle was the queue for visas. You don't generally need to pre-purchase - just get it on arrival. On European passports we paid 10GBP. (We could have paid 10Euros!!)

It's pretty obvious that Turkey really wants to be in the EC - everything is priced in Euros and Turkish Lira. We worked with Lira as it was fun t deal with yet another currency. We succumbed to a tout for a 'minibus' to our hotel. Reason? Ataturk Airport is well west of the city and we were staying in the centre of the old city! Much too far to be bothered trying to find our own way. After all, it's a city of about 16,000,000!

It took the driver nearly an hour to find the hotel!!!!!!!!!! Boutique Hotel Dedem. Erm, where should I start? OK - with the positives. Number one and NOT to be sniffed at - it really is only a matter of meters from the main attractions. Excellent. We could walk everywhere till we dropped. Second, the staff were very friendly and obliging. They booked a Bosphorus tour for us, they changed our room instantly (more in a mo), they advised on where to hire a car - oh yes we did!

BUT... the room. Number one room. Well, it wasn't so much what didn't work, more what did! NOTHING! I honestly mean NOTHING! No bedside lamps, the shower leaked all over the floor and the door wanted to fall off every time we slid it shut, the toilet ceased to flush, the aircon wasn't really quite as we'd hoped (!) There was no sheet till day 2 - by which time we'd arranged to move rooms. We couldn't get any English TV channels. Now before you get all uppity - it really is nice to come back after a hard day's touristing and just relax a bit - at the very least we thought we'd get BBC World to find out what was happening!

Number 2 room - the shower still leaked but we'd given up on that one and at least it was efficient. We could get BBC Prime, and the bed had a sheet or two. Turks, by the way, don't supply sheets that cover two people. We had one bedside light that worked - hurrah! Once we got a bulb, the second one worked too. Oh joy!

And now you're asking in frustration - why on earth did we not move hotels? Ea - sy. It was cheap and literally we were only 5 minutes from the Blue Mosque, the Cistern, the Hagia Sophia, Topkapi Palace and oooh... 10-15 from the Bosphorus and Sea of Marmara! Now would you have wasted your holiday looking for another room? No - I didn't think so. PLUS... I have to say that the breakfast room had a glorious view across the bay. Well, worth it.

Our first evening ended with a meal of real Turkish lentil soup and kebap. Turkish food is wonderful and we ate really well. We were also deeply impressed by the friendliness of the Turks we met on that first evening. They took our refusal to buy carpets very well! More of that later!

Anyway, so ended our arrival in Istanbul and the following days were shaping up to be just terrific. Next installment soon. If any of you are reading this, please do feel free to comment and ask questions!