Craig6z

Ankara back to El Lay

After the whirlwind trip to Athens, we felt it was time to stay relatively close to Ankara. My buddy wanted to avoid his staff for another day, so we decided a half day drive to a local town was warranted. My buddy suggested Beypazari which is about 100 kilometers from his house and is known for a unique type of wooden home architecture, and inexpensive silver jewelry. The distance was not great, but due to the side of Ankara we were leaving from, it would take us nearly an hour to get out of the city limits.

Beypazari was extremely quiet and the two of us had lunch at the best restaurant in town for about $15 total. This included three appetizers, three entrees, and a couple of drinks. Food in rural Turkey is quite cheap. Ankara for comparison purposes might be twice as expensive, at a “quality” restaurant for the same lunch. After lunch we walked to the silver marketplace to find every vendor’s shops closed down for mid-day (Friday, which is the holiest day of the week) prayers. A thirty-cent ice cream cone later, the shops started reopening.

While you can buy extravagant silver works in the town, most of what is sold is ornate earring and pendants. Prices are determined by weight, and negotiating is kept to a minimum. I found it amusing that a set of nothing but .925 silver earrings, and a set with a semi-precious stone displacing half the weight, would be priced the same. Regardless of the pricing matrix, a nice dangling set of earrings runs $3-8. It says a lot about how inexpensive the stuff is, and the slow local economy, when a large portion of the stores output is exported to Jamaica for resale.

I’m happy to say the return flights to Los Angeles were not eventful, outside of a long transit time (27 hours from leaving the Ankara apartment to my front door). Due to the constant changes in my bookings, I had to fly to Munich and then to Heathrow on Lufthansa, then connect to Air New Zealand’s LAX flight. Munich was a bit of a drag, as the delay was nearly four hours and the terminal lacks much excitement. The duty free shops are boring and expensive, and the LH Business Class Lounge is charm less.

Not that the United First Class Lounge in Heathrow (which Air NZ uses) has much more charisma. I’ve been in the Red Carpet Room next to it many times and had the expectation that the First Class Lounge would be materially nicer. Wrong! Outside of the elitism involved, I don’t even see why United bothers. It was interesting to note that at that time of the day (NZ1 leaves at 16:30) the UA Lounge is only inhabited by Air New Zealand flyers. This situation gave the NZ ground staff the opportunity to visit the Lounge about 35 minutes prior to boarding, and approach each guest with introductions and solicitation as to whether they could offer some assistance. A very nice touch from an airline that turned out to be very elite flyer friendly, from the minute I first encountered them at LHR to the second I left the plane in LA.

Air NZ’s first class section is 12 seats downstairs in the nose section of the 747-400. The seats are not high tech sleepers, but are “reasonably” comfortable and recline probably to 170 degrees. Two (London based) continuously cheerful flight attendants were serving the full compartment, and it appeared they already knew seven or eight of the occupants. I would describe the atmosphere as “clubby”, yet being a NZ virgin I did not feel like an interloper.

Dinner Selections were created by London based chef – Peter Gordon of “Providores”, and were as follows:

Appetizers
-Prawn and mango in spring onion crepe with coconut sambal, coriander and wasabi tobiko

-Tomato and mozzarella gnocchi with crème fraiche, sun-blushed tomatoes and basil (my choice, good, but small portion

Soup
-Sweet corn and saffron soup with grilled sweet corn (spectacular, I’d pay money to get the recipe… the couple across from me were also raving about it)

Salad
-Garden weeds with blue cheese dressing

Main Course
-New Zealand lamb shanks with mustard mashed potatoes and minted pea salsa (my selection, very good, large portion, and little fat content)

-Pan seared chicken supreme wit spicy plum and star anise, ginger risotto cake and pak choy

-Lemon and herb marinated snapper on sweet potato and spinach bake with black bean and olive salsa (I was not able to see the last two entrees as the people across from me also had the lamb, and the woman next to me did nothing but drink Dom Perignon 1995 starting at boarding and throughout the ninety minute dinner service. And did she drink the Dom! I’d safely estimate she put away three bottles before she fell into a long sleep.)

Dessert
-Ice cream of real orange, vanilla crème, and double peach (decent, but not up to the fat content of the artery hardening ice cream LH served)

-Steamed chocolate almond pudding with coconut, pistachio and white rum sorbet

The only wine I tried was a respectable Nevis Bluff 2001 Pinot Noir.


Despite the only reasonably comfortable first class seats, I was able to sleep five hours, which is two hours beyond normal for me. Add to the dinner service, high tea service, and three hours of watching “Gangs of New York”, the eleven hour flight went very quick. I would certainly recommend Air NZ First Class for service and food standards. If they installed state-of-the-art seats, they could rank up in the top three or four world-class carriers IMHO.

The End






[This message has been edited by Craig6z (edited 10-12-2003).]

Nanook

Great report, Craig.

mad_atta

What a great report, Craig6z. Interesting to hear the comparison between LH and NZ F products. Apparently we can look forward to a revamp of NZ's long haul product around this time next year... personally I wouldn't be too surprised if F disappears completely, but on the basis of this and other reports let's hope it stays on with hardware to match the rest of the service.

Craig6z

Couple of minor postscripts. I was shocked to see all four Turkish Airlines segments post to my AAdvantage account within five days. Excellent partner service.

Also, my friend in Turkey checked on THY crashes, and there has not been one in Ankara for twenty years:

http://www.airdisaster.com/cgi_bin/a...rkish+Airlines


[This message has been edited by Craig6z (edited 10-18-2003).]

Bretteee

The crash was in Devarbakir that killed 70 in 2003 also due to bad weather on landing. Apologise: I got the cities mixed up. But THY crashes seem to be on domestic flights.

chichow

Argh! and here am I paying $2.25USD in the northern part of Beijing.