Day 90 - Late Nights and Airport Transfers

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Let's start with where I left off yesterday. On the way to the airport in Cappadocia to return back to Istanbul on an 8:25pm flight landing in Istanbul at 9:55pm. Our hope was to be out of the airport by 10:30pm and back at the hotel by 11:30pm. Well, that was a good plan - until it wasn't.
We checked in and all was good, then shortly after that we noticed our flight had been delayed to 9:30pm, that meant not getting back until after midnight some time. We had meant an Australian Father/Daughter couple on our tour (Keith and Georgia) and they were travelling on the same flight back to Istanbul. We sat and chatted and then noticed that the flight had been delayed again, until 10:30pm. Argh, what a long day this was becoming, remember we had been up since 5am for our early morning adventures. Keith produced a deck of cards and we whiled away the time playing 500. We continually checked the Departures Board for updates and sure enough we were further delayed until 11:15pm, in total we had been delayed by 2 hours 50 minutes. It did cross my mind if the delay was a maintenance related issue, but best to not think about that. Whatever the issue, we eventually boarded and took off shortly after the advertised 11:15pm. You get to a point where you are actually too tired to sleep and that's where were were. We got to Istanbul airport and walked for about 15 minutes to get to the exit and meet our transfer. From there it was the ride back to Istanbul and we ended up at the hotel shortly after 2am in the morning, barely conscious and exhausted.
This morning Jeff still has his bike box contents to finalise and we both have to work on how exactly we will manage to disguise the weight and number of pieces in with our carry on luggage.
Weight will be my issue with carry-on and Jeff will be tight with the bike box. For mine, I'll be wearing more clothes than I need to and have my pockets stuffed with phone, battery, glasses, USB cables, ear pods and anything else I can get in them that then won't be counted in my carry-on weight.
When I finally did go out I walked up the now familiar path to the top of the hill and down through the Bazaar, I crossed over to the other side of the Golden Horn and up the hill to the Galata Tower. It really is an impressive tower that was built in 1348 and has had several different uses over time including prison, watch tower and is currently a museum and exhibition space.
The one other thing we did this morning was organise our transfer to the airport with a travel agency a couple of 100 meters down the road, all I had to do was come back later to pay via credit card as their machine wasn't working. With that squared away we are basically ready for the final gathering of possessions, looking under the beds and doing final room checks for the 90th time - not something I'm going to miss. I'll probably look under my bed every morning by habit for a week after I get home.
Later in the afternoon, returning from the Galata Tower the heavens opened and Istanbul was washed clean. Myself and several thousand others sheltered in the Bazaar where the cost of umbrellas and rain ponchos quadrupled in a heart beat. When I got to the travel agent to pay for the transfer he insisted on checking flight numbers because people often get the multiple airports here mixed up - as it turns out, including me. Had he not insisted on checking we would have ended up a 2.5 hour drive away from where we needed to be and in all likelihood missed our flight. As you can imagine I thanked him profusely and feel the 50 euros for the transfer has paid for itself many times over!
Look for a facebook photo post just for foodies that I took while sheltering in the bazaar, the colours and displays are worth a special post just to showcase them.
It's now late afternoon and clothes have been washed, carry on bag sorted, trial packed and weigh-in completed. Now just waiting to go out and celebrate with Jeff our final night in Istanbul. We don't get picked up until 3:30pm for our airport transfer tomorrow, which will give us time for a final look around before departing.

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Photos

Kamondo Stairs
Where all the cool peopled get photographed Two model shoots were in progress when I waked by.