Istanbul; Wednesday, 15 December, 2021

I’d stayed overnight at an airport hotel as the flight was relatively early in the morning, so after a quick breakfast I hopped in a Uber and headed over to terminal 5. It was a smooth journey through Heathrow and down to the gate, though the flight ended up being late boarding as the plane had to be towed in from the airfield and got stuck in some traffic.

We eventually pushed back about 45 minutes late and headed off East. We managed to make up a bit of time, but we were still 25 minutes late by the time we reached the gate at Istanbul airport. A smooth journey at that end helped, including a very quick journey through immigration without anyone even looking at my PCR test result and on through customs. I headed out of the airport to meet my transfer.

The transfers were a little chaotic and it was a good 30 minutes before I was finally in a taxi heading straight into the Wednesday evening rush hour traffic into Istanbul. It took just over the hour, and some inventive driving from the taxi driver but we made it in one piece to the hotel and I was able to checkin.

After dropping off my stuff I headed down to the hotel restaurant for dinner as it was easier than trying to find somewhere outside given it was already quite late in the evening – a four hour flight and a three hour time difference accounting for a large part of the day.

With dinner finished I headed back up to my room and had an early night as I had an early start the following morning.