Turkey Travelogue - Istanbul Day 1

Our annual summer vacation this year was to Turkey from Thursday June 27th thru Friday July 5th. This time we took a packaged tour, with a tour operator organizing all the details of our travel within Turkey. During this trip we visited 3 places - Istanbul, Cappadocia and Kusadisi. What follows is a brief recap of the Istanbul part of the trip. I will talk about the visit to Cappadocia and Kusadisi in subsequent posts.

The trip started early morning on June 27th with a 2.5 hour drive to the JFK airport in Queens, NY. We took a direct flight from NY to Istanbul even though flights connecting via Moscow or Kiev were significantly cheaper. This was our first time flying Turkish Airlines and it was quite a good experience. The Asian vegetarian meal that we had ordered though could have been better.

We landed at the new Istanbul airport that is close to Black Sea on the European side.The airport is absolutely beautiful, one of the best airports in the world, but quite a ways away from the city. Below are couple of pictures of the departure area of the airport

Immigration and customs was fairly quick and when we exited the airport our tour guide, Kader, was waiting for us in the arrival area. He took us to our shuttle ride to our hotel that was located close to Taksim Square in the heart of Istanbul. The hotel allowed us to check in early and we spent most of June 28th catching up on our sleep. In the evening, we went for dinner in Taksim Square and explored the area around our hotel.