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Published: June 12th 2017
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Geo: 41.0245, 28.9881
There was a substantial checkpoint as we approached Ben Gurion Airport. They boarded the bus and checked our passports, but that was it. I still had visions of when I flew out of this same airport more than 25 years ago, when it was quite a madhouse and I distinctly remember the man squeezing out all of my toothpaste to search for explosives. This was in my mind as I prepared to run a security gauntlet that never came.
Before we could check in with the airline, we had our passports inspected and answered some very basic questions. After check-in, we approached the security screening area and I girded my loins...unnecessarily. There was absolutely no back-up. They did not make us remove our shoes, or belts, or even take tablets/laptops out of the bag. I even had all of our liquids set aside in a bag, but when I asked the guy about it, he just shook his head and pointed for me to leave everything in the bag and push it through the x-ray machine. So, everything got thrown onto the conveyor belt, we walked through, and it was over. I'm sure if we had fit a profile, we
would have received scrutiny, but we did not. TSA could learn A LOT from Israeli security.
We then went to passport control, where we had no questions at all. They printed out and handed each of us a little card with our info, picture, and a barcode -- as on arrival -- and we were off. We used the little card to open a final gate, and we were through. The whole process was less than five minutes end-to-end. Wonderful!
Our flight to Istanbul left at 9:15pm. We were on an Airbus 330 -- identical to the one we flew from Washington to Istanbul. It was less than half full and we had lots of room to stretch out. The flight should have been two hours, but we were advised that there was so much air traffic in Istanbul, that we had to circle for a while. We eventually landed close to midnight, and it was already Sunday by the time we got into the huge line for immigration. I had purchased our Turkish visas on-line before we left, in the false hope that it would save us time. I was wrong. The immigration line was like a Disneyland ride, with at
least a dozen line switchbacks. The airport was abuzz with people and activities, and there were dozens of planes arriving from China, Africa, Russia, India, etc. As such, the line was full of lots and lots of tired, smelly people, some of whom had eye-watering body odor. Truly. At various times we'd hit a pocket of smell that was so bad, we'd have to move or adjust, hoping to get into the flow of air from an overhead air conditioner. It took nearly an hour to clear immigration, which was not a fun way to spend the time.
We had a driver waiting to meet us on the other side, which helped, and before too long we were on our way to our hotel, which was located about 25 minutes away in the Sultanhamet area of Istanbul. It was close to 2:00am when we finally changed and collapsed into bed.
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