After 4 hours of flight, the plane started its decent into Istanbul International Airport. When the plane broke cloud cover, the Aegean Sea and the many islands came into view.
Turke's seafront is heavily populated. From the photo below, you can see how dense the buildings are to each other. This is not Istanbul yet.
The islands where the rich and famous spend their holidays.
Istanbul, the European side.
Istanbul is a great port city. Many big ships visit the city. Because it is also a tourist city, huge ocean linears make it a port-of-call as well.
I am surprised of the lack of tall buildings here. I am glad that it is still lush with greenery.
The main international airport. A Turkish airline plane.
This airport also caters for military flights. Numerous plane bunkers can be seen in the background.
The journey to the city was via multi-lane highways. All the way from the airport, the place looks clean.
Cannot see any rubbish on the side of the road.
Getting closer to the city, a few tall buildings started to crop up.
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Arrived during peak evening rush hour. Although the taxi driver says the jam is bad, relative to KL, it is quite pleasant.
The economic transformation in Turkey can be seen in the cars that they drive. All European cars, new and hardly any with any collision damage.
Arrived at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel. After getting the key, went straight to the room to clean up. The rooms are designed using late 19th century concept. When you enter the room, there is a passageway where a small side table is provided to leave your keys and nicknacks.
This passageway leads you the bedroom and the toilet.
The paintings on the wall depicts the Ottoman heritage and the toilet is decorated similarly.
It has modern comfort and the LCD TV is connected directly to your account so that you can track what you have used. The only thing that is missing is the kettle. I found out why later.
Do not drink the water strainght for the tap. It is horrid. I wanted to have a hot bath after the long flight but when I return later, I found out that the water was yellow. Yuck! Now I know why they gave a number of bottled water in the room and they don't encourage patrons to make their own hot drinks.
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