Day 2. Thursday 2 April.

The cabin crew on this leg of the journey were very quiet and hardly noticeable – but equally efficient.

Arrived in Istanbul and deplaning, immigration, ETIAS, and baggage pick up procedures. Once again all went very smoothly until we looked for transport to get to our hotel at Levent. The bus to there didn’t depart the airport for another hour and a quarter so we were persuaded to take a bus to Taksim from where we could catch the Metro. It wasn’t, of course, quite that simple. After about an hour we arrived at Taksim in the rain and the Metro nowhere to be seen.  Fortuitously an Uber driver turned up at that moment and we had a rather interesting discussion about how much it would cost us to get to our hotel. In the end he said he would do it for €17 and we said ‘let’s go’. He was was a card. Tried to teach us how to speak a number of words in Turkish all of which we failed but it was a bit like driving in a demolition derby, but no crashes! We joked about the state of the world – at one stage seeing the Trump Towers.

Arrived at the hotel, through security screening, and apparently looking lost in the lobby,  were taken in hand by a delightful young lady who arranged our room for us, explained everything and gave us a few more words in Turkish, particularly how to say thank you, and we settled in.

D then discovered that he’d neglected to pack enough undies, so part of our stretching walk was to a nearby shopping mall – T’s least favourite activity. There were two close by – the up market one, and the cheap one. We went into both – through security screening. Wandered around the cheap mall (actually not really cheap) and successfully accomplished mission, along with some snacks and beers. Obviously recognised, as we were waved through the security screening on return.

Days one and day two over. The trip proper has started, hopefully after a long sleep.