Sailing Calista18 April 2024 – 19 April 2024
We departed from the shores of New Zealand mid morning on Thursday 18 April 2024 on our national air craft carrier, Air New Zealand heading first to Hong Kong where we would have a layover of about five hours before our connecting flight to Istanbul.
New Zealand is known as “the land of the long white cloud” and it lived up to it’s name. The clouds at the time were like little puff balls floating along in the sky. We left the shores of New Zealand behind and turned in the direction of Hong Kong. We are on our way.
Flying into Hong Kong for the first time we were fortunate that the skies were fairly clear as we flew low over Tsing Yi on the left hand side of the aircraft as we were on the final approach to the airport.
We had a good view of the Sha Tin race track. Once we had touched down on the tarmak and the aircraft was taxiing up to the terminal we noticed so many cranes of various sizes, there must have been hundreds of cranes and so many construction zones undergoing extensive new works.
We shuffled off the aircraft along with everybody else and made our way to the transit area. There was no rush as the stopover was for 5 1/2 hours so we had plenty of time. While we were relaxing, Paul suddenly realised that we had made a blunder with our hotel accommodation in Istanbul. We had made the booking for the night of the 18th thinking we were gaining a day as we flew but in actual fact we were flying west. We were actually arriving in Istanbul at 5.30am on the morning of the 19th. Oh well, there was not much we could so, only to wait and see when we arrive at the hotel.
Arriving in Istanbul it was still early and we touched down at 5.30am.
We collected a rental car from the airport and with the aid of goggle maps we drove for about 40 minutes to our hotel, the Movenpick. On arrival we were greeted by friendly staff and we explained our predicament.
The room was still available and they agreed we could have the room until mid day so we could freshen up. We had a lovely view from the room across the Golden Horn Estuary to the skyline beyond. We decided that we would actually stay the night as well, as the weather wasn’t looking very promising that afternoon for driving part way to Cappadocia, and we also needed to catch up on some much needed sleep.
As the room we were in was already prebooked, in the afternoon we had to move across the hall to a different room . The view was looking out onto other buildings but we weren’t too bothered as we were only there to sleep and would be heading off early in the morning.
After having a shower to freshen up, we went out for a drive around the district. Traffic was chaos and there was a large presence of traffic police about and was rather daunting. It was quite difficult to find a park but we managed to find a spot down by the harbour and got out to stretch our legs and have a look. It was bitterly cold and drizzling so we didn’t hang about for long.
We drove back to the hotel where we enjoyed a cup of coffee in the lounge and relaxed until it was time for dinner. We were tempted to have a movenpic icecream but the coffee won out, we wanted something nice and hot.
As it was a miserable evening we decided to eat in the hotel. We rode the elevator up to the 10th floor to “Arca” restaurant (pronounced Archer) It seemed very appropriate for us to dine in the restaurant.
The waiter very kindly offered to select some traditional Turkish tapa dishes and we thoroughly enjoyed the selection he had chosen for us. For the main we shared lamb tenders which were devine.
The kitchen was on full view to the restaurant and they were at least eight chefs/sou chefs busily going about their preps and cooking.
The evening views over the city were lovely, despite the stormy clouds.
Breakfast selection was amazing with hot and cold dishes to cater for everyone. We ordered freshly cooked fried eggs which were so fresh, the yolks were a rich golden colour.
After our scrumptious breakfast and full tummies, we went back to our room to collect our bags and proceeded down to reception to check out. We went to the concierge desk to request our car and when the car was delivered we stowed our bags in the boot, then headed out onto the wet city roads in the general direction to Cappadocia.
