Türkiye Touchdown

After a busy start to my new job at TASIS England, on 13th February we settled in for a relaxing night in the Luton Town Premier Inn, one of my favourite haunts and a steal for just £38! I just love the free parking here in the NCP next door - by staying in the Premier Inn you simply get a validated ticket for exit. Win!

We had a relaxing night then breakfast in the morning - £10.99 for me and free for Tiger. Our flight wasn't until 14:00 so we Uber'd over to the Holiday Inn Express for £6.99 - our new drop point at Luton. From here we walked down the steps to the main road, and headed straight for the airport through the tunnel - about a 3 minute walk!

As you can see from the photos, there are lots of vending machines for little plastic toys before you go through security now. At £1 per ball, this is Tiger's new favourite thing to do and actually for £5 quite a cheap way to get five small toys to entertain a child. You just have to remember your one pound coins!

The Wizzair flight was 4 hours (and 5 minutes) and for this one we hadn't paid for seat selection so we were in the 36th row in a window and aisle seat. The flight was (of course!). a bargain at £135 for the two of us hand luggage only for a week! In addition we paid 30 euros for the food / boutique voucher each way (£49.50) which saves you a little money on on board snacks. I really like this and now do this every time we fly with Wizz.

In Istanbul, we were due to land at 21:05 and had booked a transfer with our hotel for 50 euros. This seemed to be good value compared to taxis and apps and was hassle free! We'd booked via their website which had amazing instructions about how to reach the meeting point E1 (through exit 14). There was a little bit of waiting around for other passengers but overall I felt it was a really good service. We also had to pay the transfer in cash when we arrived at the hotel, but again we knew this in advance so it was not a problem.

We checked into our hotel Sadaret Hotel - Old Town Sultanahmet which was £103 (113 Euros) for 2 nights on a non-refundable rate. Our room the 'Penthouse with sea view' was great, with a little balcony, kitchenette and (importantly for the hand luggage only situation) a washing machine in the bathroom. It was a also great location, in the old town and with a mini market across the street for milk and snacks.

On Sunday 15th February, after a bit of a lie in, we headed first out for lunch in the sunshine then had a day of sight-seeing...

Following a Chatgpt itineray (as I had no particular plan!) we went to the Blue Mosque and did a walk down to Gülhane Park. We were so lucky to be blessed with beautiful sunshine! The Blue Mosque is very easy to get into but visitors go in through a visitor entrance and ladies must cover their heads. There are scarves provided in case you don't have one.

The walk down the Gulhane Park was actually a great idea and really meant we saw a lot of this area of Istanbul! We picked up chocolate ice cream and giant bread pretzels for Tiger on the way and enjoyed the fountains before wandering back.

On Monday 16th February, we had another relaxing lie in before heading back to the main Istanbul airport (IST) for an internal flight to Kayseri (KSR). This was with Turkish Airlines and was a little on the expensive side 9,762 TRY (£160) including a seat booking (£3 each) but was our only really expensive internal flight during our entire trip!

At the other end, I had extremely last minute (I was at the airport!) booked a transfer via Airbnb Experiences for £25. This ended up being so convenient though and we were dropped to the door of our hotel in Göreme. We had a gorgeous 'King Suite with Spa Bath' room 303 at Latona Stone Palace for £101 for 2 nights. I'd paid a little more to get this but it was so worth it! We had arrived in Cappadocia!