Hello!
As some of you may know, my family and I decided to go to Turkey this year for our holiday. We are currently in Istanbul!
Some of you may be wondering why I have named this post the way I have as this is a travel blog. In answer to your question, I really don’t like the travelling bit of travelling....
Let me explain, today was one of the worst experiences I’ve had with regards to actually physically moving from one place to another. We caught a flight from London Heathrow to Istanbul which lasted about 4 hours. We had to get up quite early, so I was tired, and I didn’t have much breakfast. I was absolutely fine for the majority of the flight apart from the end. I just got really sick and threw up in one of those paper bags! Although this was horrible and I would never want to do it again, it was on my bucket list to use one of those paper bags so I’ve ticked something off at least!
We got off the plane and arrived at a very busy passport control, the queue was long and it was hot! Once we got our visas checked and our passports stamped we collected our luggage and exited the airport in hope that out booked taxi driver would be there. He wasn’t. The airport was super busy by this point and it was hot! Like I’m talking sweating in places you didn’t know existed hot. We waited for a really long time to get a taxi and by this point I was feeling rough again. The taxi bays were so busy with vans trying to do dodgy manoeuvres and police cars sounding their sirens, it was total chaos but I kinda liked it. I was so relieved when it finally arrived, the drive was supposed to take 20-30 mins but the traffic was so bad. We were driving for what felt like forever, all of us were tired by then so Dad thought it would be a good idea to hop out and buy some coke (because coke is the healer of all things). This would’ve worked if the traffic stayed still but it didn’t and our taxi driver didn’t speak English so we raced off leaving Dad alone in a very busy backside street of Istanbul (advice for anyone travelling to a country they’ve never been before - don’t get out of the taxi). The next 10 minutes were panic stations as I was trying to communicate to the taxi driver that he needed to stop, my sister was on the phone to my dad giving him very vague directions as to where we were, and my mum and brother were trying to look out for a 6ft5 confused white man. The taxi eventually drove back to where he was and we got him back in! was it worth it for the coke? Probably.
But despite all the troubles we had, we made it to the hotel and after some rest and some good food I felt much better. The point of this post is to basically demonstrate how tiering and hard work travelling can be and that there are times that I really question why I do it to myself. But moments like this evening, when as a family we sat together on a rooftop in the middle of Istanbul with stunning views across the bay and of the Sophia and Blue Mosque with a cool evening breeze blowing through my hair, make everything worth it.
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