2009 - FIP Istanbul: Days 1 & 2: Tue 1 Sep & Wed 2 Sep - Hervey Bay to Istanbul, via Brisbane, Singapore and London

Day 1: Tue 1 Sep - Hervey Bay to London via Brisbane and Singapore

Greg was going to drive me to Brisbane, however, for some reason was unable to so I booked a one-way ticket from Hervey Bay airport to Brisbane, and was safely ensconced in the international QC in Brisbane with 3.5 hours to spare. As I was paying for this trip, it was cattle class, not Business.

A change of planes in Singapore and I was on my way to London to meet up with Jane before flying into Istanbul together; neither of us wanted to be travelling alone in a taxi in Turkey.

Day 2: Wed 2 Sep - London to Istanbul

I arrived in London before Jane and had had a refreshing shower in the BA lounge when Jane arrived and had me paged. She then had a shower, and we caught up on life since we had last seen each other in Beijing two years earlier (I did not attend FIP In Basel in 2008 as I had had my shoulder reconstruction surgery in March, and it was still not strong enough to cope with international travel).

Jane told me about her light-bulb moment whilst flying over Turkey to get to London – she was about to add an extra eight hours of flying, just to meet up with me so we did not have to catch a taxi on our own!! So, by the time we boarded the plane for Istanbul, we were both so ‘tired-drunk’ that we were giggling like schoolgirls at just about anything from the fact that Jane was flying more hours than she really needed to, to the safety demo. Unfortunately, Jane had the middle seat of three and had a nice young man on her right who thought we were quite mad. He warmed to us after we were trying to pronounce the name of the Officers Club (Harbiye Orduevi) which was to be our accommodation for the next 13 nights. So, after a few tips we were firm friends!

After collecting our luggage, we found ourselves a taxi and showed him, in Turkish, the name of the place we needed to go to - Harbiye Officers’ Club. Well, he got us close three times. We went around the same block three times and were about to start the fourth when he stopped and asked what looked like a military man where this place was, and it was right there. Being an Officers Club, it was enclosed with a high wall and a small security entrance gate, complete with x-ray machine. We had to present our passports and military ID to get in! The accommodation itself is a hotel, complete with check-in desk in a spacious lobby. We were assigned our rooms, and I unpacked some stuff, had a shower, lay on the bed, and went to sleep. The only thing wrong with the room was that it has no aircon. We are on level 3, and for some reason, only rooms on levels 5-21 have aircon.

My room