Intro and Greensboro to Chicago
Air Canada Maple Leaf Lounge Toronto and Exploring Toronto
Air Canada Executive First Suite Toronto to Istanbul
14 Hours in Istanbul
Aegean Airlines Business Class Istanbul to Athens
Hotel Amalia Athens and Exploring Athens (Part 1)
Exploring Athens (Part 2)
Athens Airport Lounges and Aegean Airlines Athens to Santorini
Anamnesis Luxury Spa Hotel and Exploring Santorini (Part 1)
Exploring Santorini (Part 2)
Exploring Santorini (Part 3) and Aegean Airlines Santorini to Athens
Holiday Inn Athens Airport and Aegean Airlines Athens to Milan
UNA Hotel Cusani and Exploring Milan
United Business Class Milan to Newark to Greensboro

When I was originally planning our trip to Greece, I wanted to schedule our flights to be as comfortable as possible.  When flying in Coach, flights over 6 or 7 hours get to be pretty rough, so sometimes it’s nice to pick a shorter overnight flight to break things up a bit.  When flying in Business or First Class, however, I take the opposite approach.  For flights to Europe, I generally look for the longest overnight flight I possibly can find.  Why?  When you have a flat bed to sleep on, a 6 or 7 hour flight is really too short to get decent sleep, with meal service on both ends of the flight.  About 2 years ago, we flew to Ireland in Aer Lingus Business Class (using only 50,000 British Airways Avios Points roundtrip), which was a fantastic deal, but given that the flight to Ireland is barely 5 and a half hours, factoring in eating dinner and breakfast, you’re lucky to get 3 hours of sleep, which isn’t much different than being in Coach.

In Business or First Class, I’d much rather be on a 9-10 hour flight.  Dinner usually takes a little over an hour, and doesn’t start until at least 30 minutes after take off, so it’s usually at least 2 hours into the flight before the meal is complete.  Plus, factoring in an hour or so at the end of the flight for Breakfast and landing, that leaves 6-7 hours of quiet, uninterrupted time to sleep.  So while there were several options for us to fly through London (~6 hours) or Germany (~7 hours), I opted to book our flight through Istanbul, Turkey, since the Toronto to Istanbul flight is almost exactly 10 hours long.

Istanbul is only about 330 miles from Athens, so we could have either connected immediately to Athens, or taken up to 23 hours and 59 minutes of a “layover” to see the city, without using an official stopover.  If you’re not sure why this is important, take a few minutes to read the difference between a layover and stopover.

The Mrs. Guru and I both slept well on the flight, and landed in Istanbul ready for a shower in the newly opened Turkish Airlines CIP lounge.  Unfortunately, as is all too common in Europe, our plane landed at a Remote Stand – effectively just an empty parking spot, and we had to take a cramped bus from the plane to the terminal.  Often times, airlines will provide a separate bus for Business/First Class Passengers, but I think they were just making sure that we didn’t get too comfortable with too much personal space in preparation for the metro into the city, as we jammed ourselves onto the bus with 300 of our fellow passengers closest friends:

Taking a bus from a remote stand at least offers the opportunity to see planes that are coming and going to places all over the world, like Singapore and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia:

Even more unfortunately, when we checked in for our flight in Greensboro, the United agent was only able to check our bags to Istanbul and not all the way through to Athens.  This meant that we had to go to baggage claim in Istanbul to retrieve our bags, and this put us on a one-way path out through Customs and outside the secure area of the airport, where the lounge was located.  So we found ourselves standing in the arrivals area with our suitcases that we didn’t want to drag around Istanbul with us.  To make matters worse, our flight from Istanbul to Athens later that night was on Aegean Airlines, and the Aegean ticket counter was completely empty, since it was around 11:00 am and they didn’t have another flight departing until 4:00 pm.  We knew that the Turkish Airlines lounge had free luggage storage lockers, but if we proceeded back through Immigration, our passports would be stamped to exit the country, and we wouldn’t be able to get back out of the airport.  So our options were:

1. “Exit the country” by going through Immigration and heading to the lounge, which would let us relax and take showers, but we wouldn’t be able to see Istanbul at all.
2. Pay for luggage storage near the check-in counters to store our bags for the day, and slum it out into the city without a shower.

We obviously decided that showers could wait – even if it wasn’t going to be the most comfortable day, we’d much rather go out and see the city rather than sit in an airport lounge for 14 hours, as nice as the lounge may be.  We were able to store all our bags in a single large locker, which was around $18 for 12 hours:

Once we had stored our bags, we headed down to the metro to get into the city.

The metro was quite an experience…we first had to purchase jetons (tokens) from an automated dispensing machine.  The jetons were 3 Turkish Lira each (about $1.35) and were valid for 1 ride each.  To get from the airport into the Old City of Istanbul (Sultanahmet area), you have to transfer lines once, which requires the use of a second jeton to make the transfer.  I’m pretty sure that I could have brought some Connect Four pieces and used those as jetons (although proceed with this at your own risk!):

In any event, it wasn’t long before we were on our way into the city.  It took about 20 minutes from the airport to reach Zeytinburnu, the stop where we needed to transfer lines.  This first half of the ride was reasonably comfortable, since the airport is the end of the line and we were able to get a seat for that portion.  When transferring lines at Zeytinburnu, however, the train we needed to board to reach Sultanahment was already jam packed – and it only got more crowded at each stop.  Given that it the temperature was in the 90s and the metro cars didn’t seem to have air conditioning, I often had to hold my leather passport cover to my nose and mouth in order to breathe a smell other than sweaty Turkishness.

Because of the amount of theft and pickpocketing that occurs in Istanbul, I wasn’t really comfortable taking any pictures on the metro…I was mostly focused on watching our belongings on the packed train.  The 25 minute ride from Zeytinburnu to Sultanahmet certainly wasn’t comfortable, but we made it without incident.  As soon as we stepped off the train, we could see the Sultanahmet Mosque (also known as Blue Mosque) just a few hundred feet away:

We walked through Sultanahmet Square to the Mosque:

As we made our way to the Mosque entrance, we got in what appeared to be an extremely long line, but it only ended up being about 15 minutes.  To enter the mosque, we knew that we’d have to take off our shoes and cover bare legs with a wrap.  Women also needed to cover their hair, and the mosque had wraps that were free of charge to borrow, which I didn’t mind wrapping around my waist, but it’s a different story to put a wrap over your head that has been used by who knows how many people and washed who knows how infrequently.  So while the Mrs. Guru stood in line, I made my way over to an area where street vendors were selling a variety of items, including scarves.  One man had several dozen scarves, and when I inquired about the price, he showed me a price tag of 35 TL ($16).  I knew that they were way overpriced, so by threatening to walk away a few times, we eventually agreed to 15 TL ($7), and I headed back to meet up with the Mrs. Guru, who was nearing the front of the line at that point.

When we entered the Mosque, it really was breathtaking to see the intricate designs throughout the entire building.  It was completed in 1616, when Sultan Ahmet (or Ahmed) was the ruler of the Ottoman Empire, and it is still an active mosque today.  There was an extremely unique combination of Eastern and Western cultures, between the Mosque structure itself and the stained glass windows:

After we had explored Sultanahmet Mosque, we made our way back through the square to the Hagia Sophia (pronounced ayasofia), which was built in 537 and has served as a Greek Orthodox Basilica, an Imperial Mosque, an Eastern Orthodox Cathedral, and even a Roman Catholic Cathedral in the 1200s:

We were able to climb a cobblestone walkway to the second floor, to see the building from higher up:

After the Hagia Sofia, we headed to the Grand Bazaar, which is a massive indoor market composed of over 3,000 shops selling everything from leather and silk to gold and pottery.

We wound our way through the maze of streets, hoping to find a traditional handpainted Iznik platter that we could bring home:

We visited shop after shop, finding lots of cheap knock-offs, or exclusive originals that were way out of our price range.  We were about to call it quits, when we came across a shop with a piece that jumped out to both of us:

The going rate (at least the initial price offered by the shopkeeper) for these pieces was usually 400-450 TL ($175-$200), which was more than we wanted to spend.  This shopkeeper was pretty tough to bargain with, but I slowly inched him down to 350 TL…walked away and then got him to 300 TL….walked away again and got him to 275 TL…and eventually got him to 250 TL ($110).  We almost headed back to the airport empty-handed, but ended up with a beautiful piece at a great price (that we needed to carefully transport over 6,000 miles on 6 more flights!)

After a few minutes of feeling like rats stuck in a maze, we found an exit from the Grand Bazaar, and headed back to the metro, each  armed with 2 Connect Four pieces to get back to the airport, where a much needed shower awaited us:

Although Istanbul wasn’t the cleanest or most comfortable city, it still was a very cultural and exciting experience.  I was a bit disappointed that I didn’t see any of the famous shoe-shine scammers at work.  We had a great time hitting a few highlights of the city, and it was absolutely worth taking 14 hours out of our trip to explore it.