After a long summer of numerous little challenges, The Captain and I were very excited to get away for a while. The destination was a cruise ship floating around in the Aegean Sea. Of course, what’s the first step in getting to any distant destination? Subjecting yourself to the wonders of the modern transportation system, complete with over-sold flights, maintenance delays, and rude passengers.

For this trip “across the pond,” we made a connection in Chicago for our first ride in a Boeing 787. The type has been in service for a decade, but we never seemed to catch one. It was always the 777 for the long haul. Congratulations Boeing and Untied Airlines, it was mostly uneventful. I did laugh a little when I saw our airplane from the gate. The mis-matched paint on the radome suggested the part was borrowed from another airplane. Good to know there are hangar queens and cannibals in the Dreamliner fleet.

As airports go, O’hare was O’hare. Like always, it was crowded and noisy. Frankfort’s airport on the other hand, was something different. The buildings seemed old and haphazard. There was an awkward bus ride between terminals and a really long walk to the gate. There was plenty of duty free shopping, but not even close to enough bathrooms. If you wanted vacuum packed sausages to take home, they’ve got you covered. If you wanted a quiet place to sit for a couple hours, that was a little more difficult. I guess it’s like expecting a cup holder in your German car.

The Lufthansa Airbus from Frankfort took us across southeast Europe and along the south shore of the Black Sea.

A full day of travel found us in Turkey’s largest city. Welcome to Istanbul, or is that Constantinople? We landed at the massive new airport northwest of the city. It serves airlines from all across the center of Asia, including places like Lebanon, Iran and Uzbekistan. Clearing the runway, the jet taxied for a solid half an hour to get the terminal. A quick glance at a diagram of the airport and it’s easy to understand why. The main taxi route is designed to avoid crossing runways, consequently, it is routed all over the place and even down into a valley off the end of runways. The other feature of the airport is the mega-huge terminal building. The ceilings were a hundred feet up, the concourses were similarly wide, and we clocked about a million steps getting from the gate to passport control, to the baggage claim, then customs and then the curb-side pick-up. Coupled with the red-eye and lay-over, it was a real test of endurance.

The airplanes look like toys next to the huge buildings.

Waiting curbside, we encountered the first of many overly eager “agents” throughout the city.

Exiting the huge building, we were met by a group of young men in white shirts. They were representatives from the various car services and tour operators. The primary task seemed to be smoking and joking, holding phones to their ears, and yelling and waving at other white shirt guys. If they were suitably distracted from those tasks, they would summon a vehicle and driver. While waiting for that ride to appear, the white shirt guys also offered anything a traveler might need to make the visit more comfortable, including locally sourced “personal companions” and “specialty pharmaceuticals.”

The ride into the city was a manual transmission Sprinter van (every vehicle we rode in was manual) that was driven at a mildly panic inducing speed down a very busy expressway into the city of 15.8 million people. Even with the formula-one style driving, it still took a solid twenty five minutes to reach the old city of Istanbul, and another lifetime after that to get the van through the roman chariot sized streets and alleyways to our lodging. When we eventually made it to The Byzantium Hotel, we dumped the luggage in the room and declared we were finally on vacation.

Vacation Part 1- To the City

Vacation Part 2- Crossroads of Empires

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