Live from Istanbul!

Well, after a loooong journey I finally touched down in Istanbul! I can't believe I'm here (but that may have something to do with the fact that I just sat on a plane for a total of about 16 hours). It's a lovely sunny and humid day in Istanbul...at the moment I'm enjoying it from my nice air conditioned hotel room! But, first things first....

As I stated previously, the day started off at about 2:30 am. After getting roughly 3-4 hours of sleep, my boss (DJ) and I woke up and drove to LA to catch our flights. Let me say, driving to LA in the middle of the night is the way to go. Zero traffic! The drive went off without a hitch, we parked and shuttled it over to the airport, and blah blah blah (all the typical getting to the airport stuff). By the time we got on the plane at 6am, I was pretty exhausted, so the first flight to NY went a little something like this: snooze, flip through a magazine, snooze, watch satellite TV (yes, Delta has satellite TVs at every seat...I got to watch my beloved E! and Food Network shows en route). But I did get an aisle Exit row seat, which was a major score. We popped off the plane in NY, got a slice of pizza, and hunkered down for the 9 hour flight to Istanbul.

I'll spare you the play by play of this flight...I had the dreaded middle seat, but the people on either side of me were very kind and didn't even act annoyed when I had to slip past them to stretch my legs or use the bathroom. I did have a kid kicking the back of my seat for a while in the beginning, but once the food came he seemed to settle down. Oh, and no satellite TVs on this flight :( I had to make do with my iPod, Mensa Genius "Puzzle a Day" book, and magazines. I managed to sleep a bit on this flight as well, so I've pieced together a decent amount of sleep over the past few hours.

I was ready to jump out of my seat by the time we landed, so we tried our best to rush off the plane and find the two lines we knew we needed to hit up next: first, the Visa desk. This was easy, no line, took about 10 seconds apiece for DJ and I to get our Visa stamps. The customs line was another story. We waited in that thing for a good hour or so, and to make matters worse, the airport was stuffy like you wouldn't believe. I was literally fanning myself with my passport (take it from me, they don't make very good fans!). After we made it through that line, we found our bags lickety split, and ventured outside to find our car service (yes, they had the little piece of paper with our names on it...so very fancy!). We got a nice brief little tour of Istanbul on our way from the airport to the hotel, so we were feeling pretty good.

We arrived at our hotel, the Grand Cevahir, just about an hour or two ago (about 11am here). It's pretty large and luxurious, if you ask me! They did make you walk through a metal detector to get into the place though, which I thought was a little odd. Oh well, safety first! We got checked into our rooms...I am on the 12th floor (DJ is on the 9th floor so we're just a quick elevator ride away). Check it out:


And here's a view from from my window:

Not too shabby, eh?

And to prove that I'm really in Turkey, here's a horrible pic of me in front of the window (keep in mind I'm still fresh off the plane, I haven't even showered yet!):


And after seeing that picture, I think it's time for me to hit the showers and freshen up! In a few hours we are going to meet with some of the other conference bigwigs to do a little sightseeing and have dinner...should be fun!

Oh and I have a funny story about toilets and lights that I'll share when I'm not so haggard and punchy from travel!