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Day 17 - Istanbul you speak now
We had a nice leisurely morning and late start compared to the day before. Ooti claims the breakfast at the hotel was the best in her life. Our morning topics of conversation were nits and of course the bachie - meanwhile dweeby American dude was talking about climate change and Harvard business school - two intense topics for breakfast time. We headed to the airport and when we got there I definitely picked the wrong line for check in. There was a Turkish family of about 20 people in front and I don't think they had never travelled before because they were so disorganised and they were trying to pack a box and sticky tape it together while trying to check in. We were getting increasingly frustrated and our blood pressure was high. Ooti was excited when we boarded the plane to Istanbul as it was our last internal Turkish flight on a small plane.
Our taxi ride from the airport to our hotel in Istanbul was definitely an experience. Our taxi driver was Russian not Turkish - he made sure that I knew that by taking off his sunglasses to show me. He didn't seem to know where our hotel was and made thousands of phone calls to the hotel to find out where it was. Then he decided he wanted to play a little translation game. He had a translation app on his phone which he made me speak into so it would translate what I said into Turkish. He kept saying to me "you speak now" - it was fine the first time but he made me say about 10 sentences. The he decided he was going to do Turkish to English and told me I was a very nice lady, while Ooti was told she was beautiful and that he loved her. Then our taxi man pointed out all of these landmarks to me and tried to make chit chat - I couldn't understand him properly - meanwhile Jayne and Ooti are laughing their heads off because they are in the back seat and don't need to deal with him. I really just wished he would have paid more attention to his driving. It felt like hours before we arrived at our destination (which was the new Istanbul). When we arrived the taxi man didn't actually know where the hotel was so he called them and someone from the hotel had to walk up and find us. Turns out Garth's mum was also in Istanbul at the same time as us for a conference so we met up with her for some dinner and drinks. Sounds like our taxi ride was nothing compared to Garth's mums experience. She had a young taxi man driver who had loud music and disco balls in the cab. He told her she was beautiful and asked her to go and get some tea with him. He then started to drive her somewhere else to have tea and she had to tell him to let her out because she had to meet us! During dinner Ooti decided to order some Turkish ravioli which was really gross and we were pleased to find out we didn't get food poisoning from the place we went to dinner. Ooti and I are heading to Dubai tomorrow and Jayne is heading home. It has been a great holiday so far!
Later
Amanda
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