It wasn’t easy getting up, but I managed and did my morning workout. I was proud of myself for having done that and after a shower had a nice breakfast. I wanted to do a video of breakfast, but there were many people around, so I just decided not to. Most of them seemed the business type. On my way back to the room, I did pick up a fig to eat.
Afterwards I got ready for work. That took up most of the day. However, one of the partners took us to lunch at this very nice restaurant. I visited it last June as well. It looks very unassuming, you wouldn’t think it’s anything special. However, the food is delicious. It’s called Madalyalı Koru Tesisleri and I wrote a review.
Madalyalı is a more traditional Turkish restaurant. It’s located in an area that is a mixture of industrial and residential. Definitely not the place where you see many tourists roaming around.
I’ve eaten twice in this restaurant, both times invited by partners who work near there. We ate in the shady more open area. There is small inner garden in there, with a pond that has frogs and turtles, though I would suggest adding fish. There is a cute waterfall. However, the waterfall does have a lot of limescale, which could use a clean-up. There did seem to be something going on with the little garden, so I hope that it’s what I suggested.
Both times I had a Turkish salad, which was very nice. I asked for a version without walnuts, as I’m allergic. If you have the same problem, then note that by default it does have walnuts. We also got some mushrooms with cheese, which looked very nice, though again, I can’t eat mushrooms. For main, I had a nice piece of meat with rice and lentils. They also brought some thin Turkish bread, which was nice. I do love the rice and lentils combo, and that’s something I’ll want to do at home.
I do recommend this restaurant. The flavours are good and simple. The atmosphere is comfortable, and even on a hot day very cool. It’s an oasis in a busy environment. For more on Istanbul, please visit my channel on YouTube, Izzy’s Travel Diaries.
After some more work, we headed back to the hotel, pretty tired. I had some free time, and the sun was shinning onto the balcony. I picked up that rolling desk-chair, a put it out onto the balcony. I had no bikini, so I rolled up my skirt and put on a workout bra. I first tried to work on my laptop, but the light was so strong. I opted for my Kindle instead. I stayed outside in spite of the loud street until I could get some sun.
I wasn’t very hungry, so we just had a light dinner at Mado. I had a lentil soup. I really love the traditional lentil soup in Turkey. I try to eat it more than once. They spiced it up a bit by adding some small mozzarella balls and crotons. The Mado near the hotel was very nice. They even shot down the fan when I asked. The air was moving fine on its own anyway. The waiter was a really attentive and fast-moving guy. I liked him a lot.
After dinner, I decided not to hit the sack yet and went down to do some video and buy a few things at the shop. My mum has a major sweet tooth, so I always try to take her some local chocolate. It was nice walking around at night. There were a lot of people about, also a couple of dogs. They seemed a lot livelier than during the day, when they mostly just lie about.
I set the alarm next to my bed to 6.30am. Pretty early, but I wanted to work out in the morning, and I also had to set time aside for snoozes and me talking myself into working out. Though thing to do. The alarm turned out to be quite annoying, an insistent beeping, which only relented for about 8 minutes with the snooze button. After two snoozes, I dragged myself out, got ready, put on the headphones, selected a Spotify playlist, and took the elevator down to -3.
It was quite abandoned so early in the morning. I checked, and there was an alarm I could pull in case of an emergency. I started with the treadmill, did some things with handweights that I’m used to doing with my trainer, changed playlists as the first one was crap. Then as a rest I took a selfie for Instagram. Got it on the 10th try. Don’t know why my phone keeps blurring the selfies. Must be a feature, but it’s annoying. It wasn’t always like that.
After my selfie break I used the bicycle, which isn’t like the usual ones. It’s a recumbent exercise bike – yes, I looked it up. It’s actually very good for my very bad knees, as they don’t have to bend over the 90° angle, which is what bothers them the most about biking. So, I did a good 10 minutes on that at a good speed. Then did some floor exercises and was done. Walked it off for a few minutes.
I took a shower, got my contacts in, hair, make-up, pretty girl, outfit trying, outfit discarded, and settled on my jeans. I went down to breakfast, and there was practically no one there. I wanted to have soup, but there wasn’t any! I’ve never seen a Turkish breakfast spread without soup. I opted to have a protein feast and some vegetables. Got tomato sauce on my top and tried to take it out with some water. Then another disaster, obviously one of those mornings, I overfilled the coffee cup and it spilled everywhere. No whitener at breakfast of course, and no soy milk. Or any milk that has no lactose and I can drink. Got a nice seat, then had to go back for juice. Breakfast went on Instagram, and I ate while listening to Matt Dillahunty dissecting a debate he had done recently. Yes, I’m an atheist and I really like listening to debates and thoughts on debates. I ate the food, but it could have been warmer. I tried the coffee, but it was awful without milk. I abandoned it and got some tea instead. Turkish tea is so strong, it’s a pretty good substitute for coffee anyway. I’ll probably do that from now on.
After breakfast I went up, tried to take out the spots on my top again with soap. I put the desk chair out onto the balcony to put the top on it to dry. We were going to check out another hotel with my boss, but I had plenty of time, so I worked on my blog, my Instagram, did the tags. Of course, my boss overslept, and we opted to skip the hotel viewing, and just go straight to shopping at Viaport.
I had a list of things that I wanted to get. It was difficult when I needed help in shops, because no one speaks English. Shop assistants kept talking to me, and I had to break it to them that I don’t speak Turkish. I did find some shoes that I wanted, which made me very happy. Shoe shopping is hard. After some shopping, I had a stop at Starbucks. Starbucks is actually cheaper in Turkey than in Hungary, which is crazy. I got a cold coffee, an apple juice, and sat down on a sunny spot to rest. Maybe get a little tan.
Then I had lunch with my boss, who was doing his own shopping. We ate at Mado, which is mostly a pastry shop, but they have some basic savoury dishes as well. I had a lemonade, which was nicer than the one before, and a köfte spaghetti. It was an interesting mix between Italian and Turkish flavours. I enjoyed it, though I probably had more carbs than I should.
After that I shopped a lot at the Koton outlet. It was great, as I finally found two skirts. I wanted to buy more, but you can barely find any skirts in Viaport. As I looked around, even though it was a warm day, I barely saw anyone in skirts. Most women wore long jeans. Not even shorts. Another thing I had a problem finding was a bikini. I tried on a few, but the fit was awful. I need to find a new one for Malaysia. I did gain a lot of weight since last year, but nothing I do gets the weight off.
I did find a new bijou shop though, with some really great stuff. It's called Deniz Kabuğu.
There were so many kids everywhere! It was hard to not fall over in one, or get a pram pushed onto my foot. Even when I was trying on shoes, I had to pay attention to not have a kid fall over my stuff.
We went to buy something for dinner and went back to the hotel. I changed and went down to the gym for another session. Used the bike again for over half an hour, so I hope I made a dent in my weightloss program. Back in my room I only had some soup and two dates for dinner. I was pretty exhausted and soon went to bed.
There weren’t really much in the way of surprises that day. The flight had the comfortable 1.50pm take-off time, so I could sleep until my normal time, have breakfast, gather anything I may have forgot about the night before, and still be ready for my ride to the airport. The weather was the only strange thing, as the days before it had been hot in my hometown, but of course on that morning there was a thunderstorm. Luckily, as we left the city limits, that soon passed as well.
Surprisingly, in Budapest it didn’t rain while I dragged my luggage from the parking to the terminal. Check-in, getting coffee went off without any problems. An annoying thing at the airport was that the wifi was nowhere to be found. Quite strange, as I usually post a picture on my Instagram before take-off. I even got a really nice picture, which I would have loved to post.
The only other anomaly was that we got on the bus, went to the plane, and the bus doors didn’t open. We just waited and waited for many minutes. It turned out that we had to wait for a person in a wheelchair to get on the plane, though not sure why the two weren’t doable at the same time.
I got a seat next to the window. I have a Turkish Airlines loyalty card. One benefit is that I’ve set among my preferences that I like to sit next to the window, so now I always get window seat. So, my fellow travellers, that’s something I recommend. Get loyalty cards, accounts for everything, as they usually have benefits even if you only use them a few times. As someone who has worked as a receptionist, I always upgraded loyalty members if we oversold on the cheaper rooms. Believe me, overselling on the basic rooms is quite common.
As the plane was getting ready for take-off, it started to rain quite heavily. So, there was rain while I was in Budapest! Luckily, I didn’t get wet this time. It really didn’t bother the plane either. Within seconds of being in the air, the rain was gone, and the sun was shining again.
The flight itself was uneventful. There were few clouds, so we got little turbulence. One new thing was the food. At every Turkish Airline flight we got a sandwich, a mousse, and drink. On that flight we also got a nice chicken salad. It did have milk, but I took my pill and was fine. They didn’t give it the usual way either, but on a handy paper tray. I hope they recycle though.
Once the plane landed we headed out and managed to go into departures instead of arrivals. Good fun. Backtracked and finally got to the passport control. The thing about passport control in Istanbul is that they make you walk up and down blocked off corridors instead of just opening the crossways. So, everyone is pretty tired by the time they actually get to the stamping person. I call it the start of Turkish training camp. I actually saw some Hungarian wrestlers get off the plane. They had wide shoulders and smashed in noses. Hope that they get plastic surgery once they retire. Though noses are notoriously difficult.
We got the luggage okay and visited the ladies’ afterwards. When I got back my boss was sitting next to a guy and they both had their arms crossed over their chests. I found it so funny, I just started laughing. Then we got the paperwork done for the rental car. My boss has an Avis card, and that usually gets us an upgrade on the car. We got a nice Ford this time. We also asked how much the tunnel is to the Asian side and found out that only 20Ł. Well worth all the time we can save, so we settled on using that from now on. A minibus took us to the rental parking. We had to wait for it and there was a family of all women next to us. The little girl started screaming at the top of her lungs. Poor thing, was probably very tired. This is to my friend Tony: Screaming kid! He’ll get it. The minibus was so full, there weren’t enough seats, so I got to ride with the driver. As I’m learning to drive now and struggling with all the pedals, I kept an eye on his feet as to how he does it. Quite neatly.
We got the car and were off to the Asian side. Traffic was heavy, but we kept a good pace. The tunnel worked out well, just as we expected. On the way to the hotel, we passed the airport on the Asian side. Before that there was some sort of surface mining going on with the dust going everywhere. After that we saw two parallel running concrete tubes that were being constructed. They were massive, but there was no apparent reason for them. Also, some basis for high electricity wiring were coming towards them from the other side of the hills. I have no idea what any of this is for, so I just described them. Maybe I’ll find out some day.
We got to the hotel, Hampton by Hilton Istanbul Kurtkoy, and check-in was as painful as it usually is, with my boss repeating the same thing over and over again, a really long list of requirements that seem to always confuse the receptionists. Especially as most of them speak very minimal English. I may put some English teaching videos onto that YouTube channel of mine that I would design for these people. I worked as a receptionist myself, so that would be a good basis for them. I’m adding another project! Somebody stop me!
Of course, the first rooms weren’t right, as they faced the very busy road. We went back, and I clarified to the receptionist that the rooms being quiet and non-smoking were top priority, all the other things were down the list.
Second rooms were good, and I got a really nice view of the square next to the hotel. The room also had a nice couch, perfect for sitting on and writing this blog. It did have a balcony, but strangely no furniture on it.
I settled into the room a bit, and we were off to find something for dinner. Before that though my boss needed to get his phones out of the car, so I waited in the lobby and had a look around. I found a typo again! What is it with Hilton hotels in Turkey and not being able to spell in English. Instead of “quiet” they wrote “quite”. Of course, as an English teacher I had to point it out, and the two staff members didn’t understand what I was talking about! I left it, as we were off to eat. I was very hungry. There are plenty of places to eat around the hotel. Even our favourite chain restaurant, Tavuk Dünyası, which is where we went. The night was quite cold, but in the restaurant it was nice. Very full, as usually for Ramadan dinner Turkish people go out to eat. I got a nice lemonade, though maybe a bit sweeter than I’d make it. My boss got all his food and had almost eaten it too by the time I got my chicken, pasta, salad combo. It was a bit much, but I ate it all.
After that I popped back into the hotel for a cardigan that I brought, and we went to the Carefour near the hotel to get some juice. We also had a look around for dinner options while we’re there.
I got in pretty late, washed my hair in the big shower. I like the shampoo and conditioner they provide. They also have a very nice hairdryer. The bed was very comfortable, but I had trouble falling asleep all the same.
I wasn’t very hungry, so we just had a light dinner at Mado. I had a lentil soup. I really love the traditional lentil soup in Turkey. I try to eat it more than once. They spiced it up a bit by adding some small mozzarella balls and crotons. The Mado near the hotel was very nice. They even shot down the fan when I asked. The air was moving fine on its own anyway. The waiter was a really attentive and fast-moving guy. I liked him a lot.
