Nevsehir to Istanbul, Turkey

6 - 8 June 2008

A Turkish Delight

After an early breakfast, Hasan drove us to the airport, where we paid him cash in US dollars for the carpets we had bought. We hope that the value of the Turkish carpets will rise faster than the value of the dollar is going down!
At the airport the departure formalities went smoothly. Our Turkish air rallye friends had already arrived, but departed after us due to some permit hiccups. They were all heading for Bodrum. Had an interesting chat with Marcel Large in the briefing room. He is the president of Raid International and organized amongst other rallies the round-the-world rallye in 1992 via Siberia and Alaska.
We joined IFR from the Ankara TMA boundary and had a somewhat bumpy flight in and out of CB's at FL100 with a 10 knot headwind. We did not want to go higher as the headwinds got stronger higher up. The radio chat became quite busy as we were transferred to Istanbul approach control, who vectored us professionally into Istanbul Sabiha Gokcen for an ILS 24.
There was a bit of delay in getting through the terminal, as the operations car had unloaded us by mistake at the international exit, so it took us more than one hour and a half before we were installed in the airport bus to Taksim Square in the centre of town. We had dinner at the rooftop restaurant of our hotel, Mavi Ev or Blue House, with views of the Blue Mosque and Aya Sofya church, until suddenly the heavens opened and it bucketed down. We retreated to the ground floor restaurant.