Arriving In Istanbul | MattLife 025

I was cold, wet & tired.

7am.

I left my hotel in Dubai and went to the airport via Uber. Listened to a Gary Vee podcast whilst in the car, and replied to some emails and texts.

8am.

After getting stuck in traffic for a bit, I finally arrived at the airport. When I went to check in, the dude said that I needed to print off my visa. But of course, I didn’t have it printed. Whoops.

After a few minutes of debating how to overcome this obstacle, I headed to the office of Oman Air in DXB and explained the situation. I managed to get a print out of my visa, and then proceeded back to the check-in area.

After that, I cleared security and headed to the airport lounge.

9am.

The lounge was great. I had pancakes with maple syrup, croissants and a tonne of fruit.

10.30am.

I boarded the plane to Muscat. The people next to me were French and planned on doing a desert excursion. We had a chat in French which was great. Having spent a month in Quebec, and at least 8 trips to France, I’ve become pretty fluent in the language over the past few years.

12pm.

Arrived in Muscat. I went to the airport lounge to grab some food, and then headed straight to the departure gate to catch my flight to Istanbul.

The people next to me were great. We had a chat for about an hour speaking about travel & music whilst on the plane. For the rest of the time, I listened to an audiobook and watched a bit of Shark Tank.

8pm.

There’s a bit of a time difference. The flight landed a little bit late which was annoying. After clearing security, I boarded the metro and headed for my AirBnB.

I didn’t have any mobile data so it was really easy to get confused whilst on the Subway.

When I exited, it was cold and raining. I had no idea where I was going due to a lack of mobile data. And all of the Free Wifi areas required a local Turkish cell number to get connected. Annoying.

The instructions from my host said it was near the Marriot. So I started asking people if they knew where the Marriot was. After all, it seemed like the most logical thing to do.

One problem: Not many people spoke English. Or if they did, they didn’t want to talk to me in my native language.

9pm

I just wanna make one thing clear: I’m not the stereotypical brit who’s lazy at learning languages. I’m almost fluent in French, and have a conversational ability of French & Spanish. My knowledge of Turkish is literally zero.

So after asking about 5 people in the pouring rain, a security guard was kind enough to point me in the right direction.

After almost getting hit by a car in the middle of the street, I found the road in which my AirBnB was on. Now I just had to find the apartment…

After walking in the rain for 10 minutes checking the numbers of each block, I found it. I was SO HAPPY. I was relieved.

10pm.

After putting my luggage down, I had a conversation with the host about my travels around the world. But I was understandably exhausted so I went to bed pretty soon after.

Cya.