I had opted not to do an excursion till tomorrow, due to wet weather forecast.  It is good that I have a spare day.  Instead, I’ll do the sights of Trabzon further from the bazaar area where I’m located. First up, I walked to the Gulbahar Hatun Mosque built in 1514.  En route, I passed […]

Sumela Monastery Trabzon’s highlight for me was going to be the Sumela Monastery out of town.  In the late autumn season, I had read that public transport options are more difficult, so I booked a tour online with Sumelatur for TRY700 (NZD35) and came with a number of other sights. I walked to their office […]

Arriving and domestic transfer in Istanbul With only 4h between meals onboard the flight from Male to Istanbul, I took only half a sleeping pill instead of a whole one.  I enjoyed 2h sleep horizontally on three seats and managed to doze for a further two. Surprisingly Turkish Airlines served 2 full meals on the […]

Revisiting sights Kim arrives in Istanbul today, coming from Taipei via Hanoi.  His flight was scheduled to arrive at 0520 but had landed at 0445. I had set the alarm for 0610 and hit the tram at 0630 for Aksaray Metro.  He had already been waiting 10 mins when I got there at 0640. The […]

Flying to Istanbul I woke to an email from Turkish Airlines advising of a 50 min delay to my 0725 service to Istanbul.  From the airport hotel, I walked over to the terminal about 1h25 prior to the new departure time. At the check-in desk, I asked if they would accept a mobile boarding pass […]

I finally had some “me time” and chilling this morning.  I had recommended that Kim visit the Dolmabahce Palace, which I had visited on a previous visit.  He did that while I relaxed in the room and then the hotel lobby. I didn’t emerge from the hotel till our lunch together.  We bought some sweets […]

Islands-hopping on the public ferries Being such a glorious morning, we thought we’d go island-hopping on Istanbul’s public ferries once more. Google Maps wasn’t too helpful with the public transport schedules to the islands by ferry because it’s a little faster to go by underground then change to a ferry. It did show a ferry-only […]

Conquering jetlag We were surprised to have slept till 0615 despite the 6h time change from Seoul.  [Edit: It turned out that we adjusted to local time straight up as we had no issues on subsequent days too.] We had an early breakfast soon after it opened at 0700.  Looking up my notes from my […]