Early morning heatwave

Flight EK419
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at the moment of writing I'm at my hotel in Istanbul, but before we get ahead of ourselves, let me start at the beginning.....

Two hours late to check in. That's what we were told when we got to the counter,  "Sir, the plane is boarding now, you'd better run", and so after cursing my lack of preparation for even the most basic part of the trip we dashed off to the drop off point where we hurriedly exchanged kisses after which I sprinted through customs and bolted through security to get to the boarding lounge only to be told that...

Hotel Boredom
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...only to be told that the plane was 45mins behind schedule.

So after a flight consisting of making inane chatter to the sweet English couple next to me and daydreaming staring out of the window we arrived at 6:00am local time. Now what kind of a place is 31 degrees Celsius at 6 in the morning? The heat hits you like a tsunami hanging on and not letting go until every single ounce of your energy is sapped. The energiser bunny would turn into a lifeless heap. Man, do I feel sorry for the people who live and work there. It wasn't what I expected, Dubai, or was I expecting too much?, imagining my hotel being a Casbah-style palace full of oil rich Arab sheikhs and a harem. I can't say I really wanted to see much more of it. It's an artifıcial city, computer generated and dropped right in the middle of the sand. But luckily my connecting flight was a few hours away and it was as'salam aleykom Dubai and merhaba Constantinople.......