American Airlines has some off peak times noted in their award chart. Business and First Class cabins don’t change, but Economy does. Notably the SAAver award for South America Region 2 as well as Europe goes from 30k miles to…

American Airlines has some off peak times noted in their award chart. Business and First Class cabins don’t change, but Economy does. Notably the SAAver award for South America Region 2 as well as Europe goes from 30k miles to…
This is quite a long flight – no need to decide whether you want to sleep or watch movies; you’ll certainly be doing both! My first flight on Cathay Pacific. The seat was a nice lie flat and felt like…
This minty lemonade… pretty tasty stuff. So this started off rough – I went to the Taksim Havatas bus location and totally got on the wrong bus to start. Part of this was being advised to go and I suppose…
So the Turkish Airlines lounge is all sorts of amazing. It’s huge and has all sorts of stuff including food, food, food. Without a lounge, I usually eat little if anything at airports. Maybe some Starbucks. Maybe some little snackies…
I went to Istanbul on a whim and winged my journey; something I am going to try and do less often in the future. Istanbul was perfect for it though, so much different and cool stuff to see there; I…
All of these places are close to each other, and actually close to the major mosques to see in Istanbul as well. The Basilica Cistern is located near Hagia Sophia. It contains 336 marble columns and has the capacity to…
So I’ll say a general comment on my experience – cathedrals have been more impressive outside – mosques have been moreso inside. I stayed in the Beyoglu area of Istanbul; all of the mosques I visited were in the Fatih or Old City…
Working remotely on my trip to Stockholm to Istanbul. In Stockholm I had more time to stake out a place to work from and it wasn’t too difficult. Of course I could work from my host’s place there or here…
A Clowder is a group of cats, and boy does Istanbul love them some kittays. One explanation for their popularity and treatment has to do with the Muslim community and Abu Hurairah, the “father of kittens” – a companion of Muhammad.…
Started off taking the bus to the metro station, where I took a train to the airport. Not the fast one but one of the slow ones (commuter trains) with a few stops. Good excuse to drain the rest of…