Text 3915, 103 rader
Skriven 2010-11-17 11:40:00 av MICHAEL LOO (1:123/140)
Ärende: trip 753
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UA 151 IAD ORD 1221 1322 752 4D

I got to IAD early and had a Red Carpet Ale, fairly decent,
like a Killian's but with a little more punch, made by
Dominion Brewery, which is no longer in Virginia, I am told,
but in Delaware. We boarded at one of the D gates with the
tiny waiting areas; I don't know what they were thinking
when they designed them.

Didn't pay much attention to what was going on; after some
mild pleasantries with my seatmate, I conked out; slept
through the snack service. The rest of the flight was
uneventful and early; Lilli's was late, and so we met sort
of halfway between gates.

After the usual greetings, we decided to go out to Andiamo
at the Hilton (elite security is really pretty fast here
except at peak times), where I had a big dish of fried
calamari (fairly ordinary); then we went back to the RCC to
drown in the now-free cheap red wine, which surprisingly is
(for now, at ORD) the Concannon Merlot, a not unpalatable
little tipple.

UA 940 ORD FRA 1818 0955 777 30HJ Ch9 Empower

Our upgrades didn't clear. My fault for not trying to dodge
this hazard of Sunday travel between centers of commerce.
The exit row is quite adequate, though, if one enjoys (but
not too much - the armrest doesn't go up) the company of
one's seatmate.

Don't remember the meal, other than that it was some chicken
curry substance over pebbly rice with peppers and squashes,
vaguely nourishing. I forgot my drink coupons (which had
expired anyway), so we had to fork over for some Chivas.

They parked us at a remote stand, of course, and we went
through the usual idiotic routine, and at length we were
bussed to the customs and immigration booth, went through,
followed bad signage through these twisty corridors and up
and down escalators and elevators,, only to find ourselves
bussed again via a completely different route to a stand
only a few hundred feet from where we had been before (this
happens altogether too frequently).

TK1588 FRA IST 1145 1545 321 28DE

Up those darned airstairs - people keep asking me whether
I can physically stand the wear and tear of all this travel,
to which I answer if I can negotiate Fraport, I'm in pretty
good condition. Which reminds me that I promised Lilli I'd
write to Dr. Pfragner, who's in charge of that kind of thing
and whom I met last year, during which meeting he had promised
that this kind of nonsense would stop.

The plane was mighty full, and the way wayback was the best
we could get. In these far reaches the help help us with
a compromise between Turkic hospitality and Teutonic
efficiency. A smile here and there. The meal was about as
much as one might get in coach on a transoceanic on a US
carrier - beef and zucchini rice with some prepackaged
snacky things and cheap red wine ad lib. We landed a bit late.
Being spewed out into the caverns of Ataturk was sort
of a shock; luckily outside immigration I saw the welcome
familiarity of an HSBC machine and soon was rich. Be that
as it may, I resisted the information booth girl's strong
encouragement that we take a taxi and at length wrested
out of her that in order to get where we needed to be (the
Pera Tulip hotel) by public trans, we had to take the Metro
to Aksaray and then find our way via other means, as there
is no appropriate service beyond that. While we were
talking, some guy insisted in his hard sell that he was
destined to be our taxi driver, a minor annoyance.

It is not hard to use the Metro, with caveats. From the
terminal it's a long walk down to the rather Soviet-looking
train station, where one puts one's dough into the machine,
which takes nothing bigger than a tenner, after the ATM of
course has dispensed only 50s, and gets a handful of tokens
and change. Luckily there is an attendant not in the
attendant booth, no, but by the pass gate, who can break
larger bills.

A fairly comfortable hour through industrial neighborhoods
to Aksaray Metro, which is not particularly close to Aksaray
tram/bus stop, being separated by several hundred feet and
a tunnel. After purchasing a fairly useless city map (the
names of the stations had been changed since it was issued,
for example, as well as the allegiances of half the hotels
spottily depicted therein - the best part was a little
attached phrasebook and descriptions of the major museums,
and even here, the museum times were wrong, and there were
included in the vocabulary the words for knickers (bayan
kulotu) and dirt-track race (kul tablasi) but not for train
station or directions (neither directions directions or
north, south, etc.)), and inquiring nicely of various local
folk, we found a bus that was going the right way and left
us off over the bridge across the Golden Horn in the dusk
for only a buck each.

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