UA 16 SAN ORD 0618 1221 752 2D
UA 151 IAD ORD 1221 1322 752 4D Ch9^ Empower

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; lili'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 lili I'd
write to the guy who'd given us that lovely tour last year
and had promised that this kind of nonsense would stop.

A warmish greeting by the cabin crew, to whom one wonders if
one should be saying Guten Tag, Merhaba, or what.

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 IST 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.

Thus began our sort of random walk, which was complicated by
half the establishments in the neighborhood having names
starting with Pera. With the aid of the desk clerks at
various of the competition, we at last found our Pera Tulip,
actually quite a nice boutiquey place with Internet stations
and breakfast included.

I had a fairly nice little room; lili's down the hall was
completely different and I thought fairly nicer. Welcome
amenity of fresh but tasteless fruit, something that I found
wherever we went - the stuff looked good but generally was
insipid, unjuicy, unsweet.

After freshening up, we decided to walk around - Beyoglu
appears to be a pretty fashionable and artsy district, and I
could have spent more time there. It has the disadvantage of
being next to Taksim, the happening part of town. So we
walked up Istikal Street - musical instrument stores and
little bars and burger joints made me feel right at home.
The way became more chockablock the closer we got to Taksim,
so we turned around just before the square, returning to a
cafe near the hotel, where we had our first tastes of
Turkish food - palatable but run of the mill lamb kebap
and kofta at what I thought was a slightly elevated price
(but turned out to be pretty much standard through the city)
- and, more importantly, Efes beer, with which we became
very familiar over the next ten days.

Slow but adequate Internet in the library. The Turkish
keyboard has two kinds of letter "i," which kind of threw
us off a bit. Also I'd forgot that AltGr-2 makes the @ sign.