Two tumultuous weeks and here I am sitting here on my Cyprus patio watching the sun come up. The early morning goats have passed by on their way to find low lying and cool pasture. They wear those tin bells around their necks, so you know when they are on their way over. The sound makes me feel like I am in a re-play of the story of Heidi.
Long, tumultuous weeks! Getting from Abu Dhabi centre to this little island was challenging to say the least. Despite the fact that we had already sent a mountain of stuff on with a shipping company, we still had a great deal of stuff to sort and discard or pack up and take on our travels with us. We paid for extra baggage. The greatest amount that the airline would accept. We were still over. Well over! Furthermore, we had left so many little bits at the hotel.-Our thinking had been that perhaps house cleaning staff could make use of most of the things. Looking back though, I'm not sure that the hotel manager shared that view. I have guilt issues around leaving the stuff in our room. It's not that we left it untidy. It's not that we had not organised it well, so that it would be easy to take away and dispose of. With hindsight, it was leaving it at all, for someone else to throw away. Ah well. I cannot undo that now, nor could I have done differently by the time our departure became imminent.
So we found ourselves on the road to Dubai Airport with so much baggage that we were each of us privately stressing about whether or not we would get it all on the plane!
Dubai Airport is such a big place, but we were travelling on one of those cut-price airlines, Pegasus. It's the Ryan Air of Turkey. Actually, it's no where near Ryan Air. We'd travelled on Pegasus before, when they had first started out and again on our return flight from Istanbul to Turkey last autumn. The first encounter was a great surprise. I think the airline was eager to make a name for itself. We found things more than comfortable and the baggage allowance quite generous. This time, with lots of bags to juggle, the attendant who booked us in, was very helpful and with her advice, we managed to configure the baggage so that we could indeed take it all without incurring heavy financial penalty. She made sure that we both got our favoured seating too. All in all a favourable start. Handing the car into the hire company was pretty painless, but the temperature was high, the terminal had very little seating and we had arrived too early to check in right away, so before meeting the helpful airline staff, we had to find somewhere comfortable to await the opening of the check-in desk.
I'm often thankful for Tom's forward thinking. He's brought cushions for the flight and while they had made the juggling of parcels more tricky, they cam in handy when we were faced with the choice of standing for a number of hours, or using them to make improvised seating on the floor.
We had a lovely Terminal-nic, right there on our cushions and settled down to wait.
Queuing for the check-in was frustrating: we're British; we tend to do that sort of thing in a very orderly manner! Other people don't seem to attach the same importance to waiting their turn. I find this especially frustrating and poor Tom has to smooth things over when I decide to chew people up for pushing in. He's long suffering and patient that man of mine!
We got through the ordeal though, and finally boarded the plane. No meals with this airline, unless you order them. I always find that travelling and eating don't necessarily mix and airline food doesn't appeal anyway, so that wasn't a problem. No film was more of an upset. Note to self, when travelling on cut price airlines, medium haul, make sure your i pod and earphones are handy! The seats were very close together. I'm 5'2", so most airline seating is plenty roomy for me and my little leggies! Even I was space challenged on this flight. I expect that many of the passengers were not comfortable and I noticed one expectant Mum was looking very uncomfortable indeed by the end of it.
Istanbul SabGor. has always struck me as a very calm and much less busy place than Ataturk. I was not impressed this visit. It was busy, seating is limited and there are none of those small luggage trolleys that make life bearable as you move around a large open space.
Long, tumultuous weeks! Getting from Abu Dhabi centre to this little island was challenging to say the least. Despite the fact that we had already sent a mountain of stuff on with a shipping company, we still had a great deal of stuff to sort and discard or pack up and take on our travels with us. We paid for extra baggage. The greatest amount that the airline would accept. We were still over. Well over! Furthermore, we had left so many little bits at the hotel.-Our thinking had been that perhaps house cleaning staff could make use of most of the things. Looking back though, I'm not sure that the hotel manager shared that view. I have guilt issues around leaving the stuff in our room. It's not that we left it untidy. It's not that we had not organised it well, so that it would be easy to take away and dispose of. With hindsight, it was leaving it at all, for someone else to throw away. Ah well. I cannot undo that now, nor could I have done differently by the time our departure became imminent.
So we found ourselves on the road to Dubai Airport with so much baggage that we were each of us privately stressing about whether or not we would get it all on the plane!
Dubai Airport is such a big place, but we were travelling on one of those cut-price airlines, Pegasus. It's the Ryan Air of Turkey. Actually, it's no where near Ryan Air. We'd travelled on Pegasus before, when they had first started out and again on our return flight from Istanbul to Turkey last autumn. The first encounter was a great surprise. I think the airline was eager to make a name for itself. We found things more than comfortable and the baggage allowance quite generous. This time, with lots of bags to juggle, the attendant who booked us in, was very helpful and with her advice, we managed to configure the baggage so that we could indeed take it all without incurring heavy financial penalty. She made sure that we both got our favoured seating too. All in all a favourable start. Handing the car into the hire company was pretty painless, but the temperature was high, the terminal had very little seating and we had arrived too early to check in right away, so before meeting the helpful airline staff, we had to find somewhere comfortable to await the opening of the check-in desk.
I'm often thankful for Tom's forward thinking. He's brought cushions for the flight and while they had made the juggling of parcels more tricky, they cam in handy when we were faced with the choice of standing for a number of hours, or using them to make improvised seating on the floor.
We had a lovely Terminal-nic, right there on our cushions and settled down to wait.
Queuing for the check-in was frustrating: we're British; we tend to do that sort of thing in a very orderly manner! Other people don't seem to attach the same importance to waiting their turn. I find this especially frustrating and poor Tom has to smooth things over when I decide to chew people up for pushing in. He's long suffering and patient that man of mine!
We got through the ordeal though, and finally boarded the plane. No meals with this airline, unless you order them. I always find that travelling and eating don't necessarily mix and airline food doesn't appeal anyway, so that wasn't a problem. No film was more of an upset. Note to self, when travelling on cut price airlines, medium haul, make sure your i pod and earphones are handy! The seats were very close together. I'm 5'2", so most airline seating is plenty roomy for me and my little leggies! Even I was space challenged on this flight. I expect that many of the passengers were not comfortable and I noticed one expectant Mum was looking very uncomfortable indeed by the end of it.
Istanbul SabGor. has always struck me as a very calm and much less busy place than Ataturk. I was not impressed this visit. It was busy, seating is limited and there are none of those small luggage trolleys that make life bearable as you move around a large open space.
