Euro 3 - Flight to Istanbult & the City itself

The business end of this trip starts with a train journey from Nagpur to Delhi airport. With a 16hr train journey behind my back i was looking forward to pleasant AC climate for the next few days in the airports and some awesome weather in Europe. Alas it was not to be, with my passport still with Vikas, AAI did not let me in, and that was that. Stuck outside the airport for almost 6 hrs with nothing to do except click a few pics and read some  novel (Thanks shweta)

 Finally got into the airport at 2am and with all the dreams of europe in our eyes we got out luggage checked in, get through with all the formalities and lo we were on board TK 717 the flight to Istanbul, our first contact with Europe. Slept for sometime but then the stewerdess woke us up for some meals while we flew over pakistan and afghanistan (that country is definitely full of mountains and deserts and nothing else!! )

Time did not flow by and it was getting painful to sit in those crumpled up little seats for which we paid all that cash. Damn these cheap airlines. finally landed at 930 at the ataturk airport.

That airport should be renamed to "Turkish airlines pvt airport", bloody all the flights there were TK's hee hee

And then comes the bad news from the TK people, since there exists a flight for Oslo at 12noon before our original flight they cannot put us on that free tour of the city or give us a hotel for stay. Damn that was not there on that site of theirs.  Planned to spend a whole day at the airport but then alas even the duty free was not tempting enough. And after a 100Rs half litre water bottle experience we realised that it is safer to get out on the road and explore the city :) Got a visa on arrival (25$) and off we were for the day. First stop was sultanahmet square. Supposed to be a square meant for the tourists with the Blue Mosque, Sophia , Museum, Cistern chapel and others all situated on that one square. 

1. Obelisk of Thutmose III

2. Walled Obelisk

3. Sultanahmet Mosque

4. Basilica Cistern , though we did not enter this one (10TL fees was too much for that )

All this along with a few hours of peace spent observing the whole area and we were ready to head back to the airport. Time to sleep at 130am and get up at 630. Flight to Oslo awaits us the next day morning