After a leisurely breakfast, we squeezed everything into our bags which are now bulging at the seams with the extra items I have bought! We then left our bags with the concierge and headed out for a walk. I wanted to go back to retrieve my jacket, but Michael was adamant that I wouldn’t need it. I really should trust my own intuition — it was overcast and cool, and I felt a little uncomfortable. 

Our destination was the Modern Tate Gallery — we wandered through the many galleries, but I failed to be really inspired by anything I saw. I don’t think Michael was particularly impressed by anything either, and so it’s not just me being artistically ignorant! 

After wandering down to the pedestrian bridge that looks towards the London Eye (the Ferris wheel) and over to the Houses of Parliament (much of which is currently covered by scaffolding), we looked for the Mountain Warehouse store near Covent Garden, as I wanted to have another look at the kids’ T-shirts. After circumnavigating the area, we finally found the store — it turns out that it’s situated only 3 stores up from the Fleet Street store I shopped at yesterday! I tried on some long shorts, but one size was a little tight and the next size up was way too big (and the design didn’t lend itself to being easily taken in). Down at the Fleet Street store, I picked up a little T-shirt for Marlo, and then we headed back to the hotel.

We collected our bags and dragged them up the slight incline to Holborn Station where, fortunately, there are massive escalators down to the platforms. The Piccadilly line goes all the way to Heathrow, and so we didn’t have to change trains (which is actually why we hauled our bags to the Holborn Station rather than catching another line from a closer station — the bags are getting a little too heavy for Michael to safely manage!). 

Having booked to fly business class to Istanbul, the priority check-in was quick and easy. We ensconced ourselves in the British Airways lounge (whilst far from the gate, we were advised that it was less busy than the other lounges). It was about 3:30pm and I was hungry — my priorities were to have something to eat and to recharge my iPad which seems to be sucking up the power at double the rate since I updated the operating system the other day. Michael’s priority was to check out all the lounges, and so he abandoned me in the lounge and went off to seek greener pastures. When he returned, he was quite flustered, saying that the gate for our flight was about to close! (How often this has happened to us!) There are no announcements made in the airport (there are just too many flights departing so close to each other), and so one is supposed to organsise oneself to be at the gate 20 minutes before departure or risk not being allowed to board. I hurriedly shoved everything back into my backpack and rushed to catch up with Michael. It was a big mistake to choose the lounge at the other end of the airport building! I felt quite sick as I weaved through the crowed, hurrying as fast as I could. Eventually, I had to slow down. Michael raced ahead, assuring me that he’d make them wait for me! As it turned out, we weren’t quite the last passengers to board, and I still had time to visit the loo on the plane before take-off. Phew!

Business class on British Airways isn’t as roomy as on Qantas — they just keep the middle seat free. I suppose there was a little extra leg room, but it was still quite tight. There was no inflight entertainment and nowhere to continue charging my iPad (I have grown accustomed to the little extras!), and so I entertained myself by editing photos on my iPad until the power was exhausted. We exited the plane on the tarmac and were then bussed to the terminal. Fast track passes enabled us to clear customs fairly quickly — we weren’t asked to show the visas we had purchased from home, and so we’re still not sure if they were absolutely necessary or not. We withdrew some cash from an ATM, collected our bags, and then went outside to find a taxi to take us to our hotel. Following advice Michael had read online, I checked that the taxi driver first in the queue had a meter in his car. He replied in the affirmative, and so we piled our luggage into the boot and set off into the dark unknown. A short way into the trip, the driver pulled over to put the hotel address into his GPS. When I asked him where the meter was (I couldn’t see one), he said ‘no’ and quoted us 95 Turkish Lira for the trip, stating that it’s usually about 80. We weren’t thrilled, but decided that it was too late at night to argue and that about AU$25 for the trip wasn’t unreasonable. (Michael had done some research and so had expected we would have to pay around this amount.) However, when we got close to the hotel, the driver seemed to have some difficulty in finding the exact location. He wound his window down and chatted with a number of other taxi drivers along the way, finally telling us that there was a problem — something about the Metro station blocking the way??? He then told us it would cost us 200 TL, because of the extra time driving around looking for the hotel! Michael had read about this sort of thing happening, and so started to get cross with him and threatened to call the police. At this point, it seemed to us that he was driving us back to the airport, but he was actually just going around in a big loop to get back into the old part of the city again. He tried to negotiate down from 200, but we adamantly refused, demanding that he stop the car and let us out — we knew we couldn’t be far from our hotel, as the spire of the Saint Sophia Mosque was in sight. The driver became a bit more reasonable — he stopped the car and we made sure all of our luggage was out of the car before handing over 100 TL. We had decided we’d just round it up from 95 to avoid any further hassling. He insisted on ‘no change’, which I initially thought was in reference to us not paying him any extra, as we had no change on us. In the end, we were just glad to be out of the taxi and, presumably, in the vicinity of our hotel — the driver pointed up the road, saying that he was not allowed to drive up there. (Strictly speaking, he was correct, but the hotel staff told us that most taxis ignore the rule at night when the trams aren’t running.) It was just a short walk to the hotel which was located on the same street. Fortunately, the front desk was staffed overnight, as by this time it was about 1am! We debriefed our experience with the man on duty, and were somewhat relieved to learn that the normal rate is around 80 TL — we hadn’t been ripped off too badly! 

It was so good to finally slip into the comfortable bed and turn out the lights.