Turkey Day 3 - Road Trip to Eskisehir

As the carrying of all our stuff was a challenge on the first night as seen in my blog from several days ago we agreed to arrange proper transport this time round to collect the rental car from the airport. It only cost only around $30NZ for all of us which is a good price for a door to door service.

So we had to be all up and ready by 9am for our ride and we were all breakfasted, packed and bags on the side of the road by 8-50am and it did not seem a great rush which was good.

Grandma, Luke & myself leaning out Coskun House in Istanbul.

On arriving at the airport where the car had been hired from things began to unravel. First up you need to go through full on airport security including bag scanning just to enter the building, so I went through and found Avis and found out that the mini-bus I had hired was in the shop. They instead offered me a large SUV 7 seater but I didn’t think this would be large enough to fit all our stuff but had no choice but to accept it. I had to go back out and get all the others and so all the bags had to go through security and scanning which took a while of course just to get to the Avis office before heading back out to get the car.

The car turned out to be a top of the range Fiat Freemont – luxury model with leather seats and in built GPS so was very nice to drive and all out stuff just fits inside. Grandma ended up sitting between the car seats in the back which was a situation I was trying to avoid with the minibus, but the Freemont is so large that she is OK, which is good news.

With all the drama’s collecting the car we didn’t leave the airport until 11-30am which was a lot later than I was planning. Leaving Istanbul was just on motorways so driving on the other side of the road is not so noticeable which was my plan but the traffic was horrendous and we crawled in a number of places, Istanbul is a huge city of 14 million people.

The afternoon was spent driving down to Eskisehir our first stop with a couple of comfort stops on the way and we arrived around 4-30pm. The hotel we are staying at is amazing and top of the line, it consists of a number of old historical Ottoman houses which have been converted into a range of hotel rooms. And for some unknown reason we have been upgraded to the top of the line ‘Sultan’s Suite’ which is simply amazing. It is an entire Ottoman House for ourselves and consists of 2 floors, with a large lounge and a huge bathroom on each floor with chandeliers everywhere – it is so very nice.

Upstairs Lounge.

Upstairs Bedroom

Upstairs Bathroom

The problem is the rooms were cold, so cold in fact that Julianne complained and the offered us smaller rooms which were a lot warmer but we decided to try one night in the fancy rooms and see what it was like in the morning and luckily for us overnight the heading slowly heated up the place so that it was toasty and warm.

For tea we just ate at the hotel restaurant which was really yummy and a tad expensive but we will make up for a cheaper meal tomorrow.