Everything was fairly painless, we has two ten hour flights from Brisbane, the first to Bangkok code share with Thai airlines and the second with Turkish Airlines. Think we should consider flying out of Sydney in future, seems the airlines out of Brisbane save their crappiest planes as was Thai's and the service they once provided is no more, sadly.
A big difference with Turkish, a beautiful plane, good service and very comfortable indeed.
Can't believe our luck, our luggage was first off, no dramas our transport was there waiting and we were at our hotel by 6am.
Struck it lucky with this hotel, thanks to Trip Adviser. Tom Tom Suites an old Franciscan Nunnery in the Old Town where several Consulates are located is absolutely fabulous!
We had read about their service and did we get it. Obviously too early to get into our room, they gave us Tea and coffee and told us to go for a walk and they would most likely have something ready about 10 am. When we got back they sent us to have a beautiful breakfast in their restaurant overlooking the harbour. After that they actually gave us a room to rest, clean up and our rooom should be ready by noon. The room was delightful we felt guilty using clean towels, slept in the bed and the room would need redoing. No problems, we had been upgraded to a much bigger deluxe suite which is probably one of the best we have ever had. Check out www.tomtomsuites.com
We have had a couple of days trying to adjust to local time, Istanbul is in the midst of a long weekend to celebrate the Muslim festival, daylight saving finished on Sunday so we've spent several hours awake when we should be sleeping. Strolled around the pedestrian area of Taksum, thousands of people had a few beers at one of hundreds of bars and restaurants and yesterday we did a HoHo (hop on hop off) bus around Istanbul and saw much more than we had on previous visits.
We can see the cruise boats from our room and know exactly where to go on Wed. when we board our ship. Our location is quite hilly so we're keeping very fit and active climbing these.
So today we are going to the Grand Bazaar and to do a few touristy things although it is currently raining at 6am. Sorry about photo quality, I'll try and do better in future.
