Blogging in Turkey now, before going to dinner. Every year my husband and I will go on an epic trip... Just months ago we are deciding where to go... Supposed to be Greece or NYC or London.. and then we decided on Turkey. We were stalking skyscanner for awhile until a couple of weeks back we finally book our air tickets.
We traveled on SQ, straight trip there without stopping by Dubai, usually most of the airlines stop there. We paid about S$1.3k for 2 tickets, as it's nearing the end of Turkey's peak season, and the weather there is about 16-20 degrees which works out best for us. Our flight time is 1:15am Friday night so I don't really have to take leave on Friday!
About one hour into the plane ride, while I was already into my deep sleep, guess what ITS SUPPER! Had to quickly finish eating and head back to sleep. The flight there is about 11 hours... And Turkey is 5 hours behind SG time.
When I woke up, the sun is rising... Had our breakfast and back to sleep again.
When I woke up again, we are above the fluffy clouds, by then the sun already is shinning in.
And flying into Istanbul!!!
And we landed. Passing by loads of Turkish planes. SQ landed early that day, but our luggage took like 30-40 mins to come out =.= we almost missed our connecting domestic flight because of that we didn't have the time to run out to get the mobile data plan before we catch our next flight. Oh well..
This is like the 3rd time I been running after planes...
We didn't went ahead with Istanbul because we were told that there's like a big holiday going on in the country for 1 week, so the people here recommended us to go somewhere else before heading down to Istanbul. Since its their big holidays, there will be loads of people, loads of traffic jam, well we didn't want to get caught in that. So we took the flight out to Izmir, our flight cost us about S$160 each.
The bus from the airport will drive us to the plane to board.
While waiting for the plane to fly, and before I went back to sleep again. The flight is about 1 hour.
Inside Izmir airport, arriving hall, looks quite new and clean.
While waiting for our luggage to come out, I took some photos of their giant marble pillars.
It looks so grand, compared to the normal white pillars on the left.
And looks expensive when matches with the glass...
So we got our luggage, time to head out. I didn't take any photos of the outside as it doesn't look very appealing like the inside. And we took our car from AVIS.
Do becareful when getting a car, sometimes the cheaper the rental cost, you never know if they have some hidden costs. People online are saying that when they got the cheaper rental, the car came in like 1/3 petrol and they keep charging $$ for random scratches they found on the car. So try to get an international car company to rent the car.
One thing that frustrates us is that we ask for a GPS and they didn't provide. In the email that they gave us they mention that there will be GPS and it was billed for. So we thought maybe we go out and take a look if they sell any mobile data since we don't have a GPS, we can use google maps.
For 7 days booking of the car, we paid S$664, so about S$95 a day for 2? Will be even cheaper if we travel in a group of 4.
On the way out to get the car, we didn't see any booth at all that sells the mobile data.
When collecting the car, my husband was still in disbelief that he still didn't have a GPS.
Our car for the next 7 days.
Driving on the left hand side, got to get used to it in the first few days to keep on the right lane.
And off we go! Without GPS and only a screenshot of the map my husband took photo of. We had to just pray and depend on God to lead us.
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Driving in Turkey
Things to note:
- Get a international brand to rent
- Left hand drive
- Get a GPS, if not get mobile plan at the bigger cities like Istanbul
- Roads are not very well made
- Cars run on diesel
- Manual are quite good for hilly roads in Turkey, but if you are not confident get auto
- Keep on the right
That's about it. Hope it helps if you are thinking of driving in Turkey.
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