Time to get down to business (travel blog part 2)

As excited as I was to be back airside at Seatac, I was also super excited to get on board for my first proper international business class experience! (Before now, I had only ever flown economy, with the exception of once getting randomly upgraded on an Air Canada regional jet which was nothing particularly special, and once on a Delta 767 back when they still had 2-2-2 recliners similar to what you would get in premium economy these days.) As such, I went against my own standard practice and didn't wait until the very end to board, instead ending up stuck right in the middle of Turkish Airlines' chaotic boarding process (it seemed that they were just letting all economy passengers on at the same time, rather than using boarding groups as most airlines do; on other flights they did have two economy boarding groups, but not this time for some reason). I've never understood the rush to get on first, especially on an airline like Turkish that has pretty strict restrictions on carry-on baggage. 

Eventually, I was able to get settled in to seat 2K, a proper window seat in the staggered seats configuration Turkish uses on their newer planes (though they have this weird wing that blocks a lot of the window view, especially on the A350 -- it's nice to have something padded to lean against, but that's not all that important in a modern flat-bed business class seat, and I would have preferred a better view out the window). The business class interior on these planes looks quite nice, even if I'm not a huge fan of the A350's interior design when compared to Boeing products. 

This was my first flight on a plane with exterior cameras available on the IFE screens, something North American and European airlines generally skip for some reason. I'm very curious why the gate we were at has an A380 marking on the lead-in line, since Seatac is very much not A380 compatible! 

We left about half an hour late, having sat at the gate for a very long time after boarding had finished for no apparent reason (perhaps something to do with there being two Turkish flights leaving at the same time). That meant it was completely dark out, which the cameras didn't handle all that well, but they're still super cool! 

I live down there somewhere! Unfortunately, I wasn't on the correct side of the plane to see downtown, but the camera made up for it somewhat. (Also unfortunately, the screens are super reflective, hence the awkward crop to get rid of my reflection.) 

The A350 has these cool LCD screens to show you what you are and aren't allowed to do at any given time. Unfortunately, they have one major flaw -- they're quite bright, and when the rest of the lights are all turned off and you're trying to sleep, they're a bit annoying. 

I spent the first bit of the flight playing some Mini Metro and OpenTTD on the refurbished Chromebook (basically an overgrown Android tablet, down to the Snapdragon CPU, that can also run Linux software... poorly) between bits of the dinner service. I was also able to use the wifi (free for business class passengers, which is a lot better than most airlines). The Chromebook's screen is even more annoyingly reflective than the IFE screen, but at least it was reflecting the ceiling rather than my face! 

Turkish is known for impressive food service, and I would definitely agree based on my flights with them! This is far from everything (there were a few rounds of starters, plus dessert afterwards, and breakfast at the end of the flight), but I'm not an airline reviewer, so I didn't feel like taking pictures of every single thing I ate. I particularly love the salt and pepper shakers! I'm sure the crew was wondering why I was insisting on drinking water rather than anything from the whole separate liquor menu, but that's just who I am.

After dinner, I spent most of the flight sleeping, or at least attempting to. In addition to the annoyingly bright "no smoking" sign above, I didn't sleep all that well because Turkish only gives you one small, thin pillow, similar to what some airlines give out in economy. I'm aware of how whiny this sounds, but with all the stuff you get in business class these days -- Turkish even puts mattress pads on each seat and gives out multiple blankets -- I'm surprised they don't have better pillows. When I woke up, I spent most of my time looking out through the cameras, and then out the windows themselves once we finally got below the clouds that were over all of Europe and there was actually stuff to see. Here's a view over the southwestern part of Istanbul, with the old airport still quite visible, basically just sitting there dormant. 

After a rather firm landing and a lengthy taxi, I was finally in Istanbul, right at sunset. (12 hours of flying plus 11 time zones means it was basically an entire day after I left!) At least in terms of time zones, this is the furthest east, and therefore the furthest from home, I've ever been! The Istanbul airport is really cool, but after not getting much sleep on that very long flight, I was absolutely exhausted and just wanted to head to the lounge and sit around for a while. I was glad to find that I didn't have to go through security between my flights like I had thought I would need to!

So that's what I did. The lounge here is a bit odd, just sitting on the mezzanine level, completely open to the mall-like space below. I was happy to be able to get a shower in the lounge, though it took me quite a while to figure out how that worked since there were absolutely no signs pointing it out (if I hadn't read reviews of this lounge beforehand, I would have had no idea there even were showers available). No, I didn't take pictures of that -- you know how I feel about restroom pictures!

I got a more comprehensive look at the airport on my trip back, but it does look pretty cool at night! I especially like all the faux-neon Ramadan decorations. 

The flight on to Rome was just a boring A321, and I was absolutely exhausted at this point, so I didn't take a lot of pictures. I was pretty impressed by the dinner they fed us on this short (2-hour) flight, so I got a picture of that at least! It wasn't anything all that special compared to the long-haul food, but it was still quite good for airplane food. 

I was in row 2 again on this flight (and on all of my flights on this trip, actually). I've never sat this close to the front of the plane before, and I thought it was neat how my seat lined right up with the jetbridge before they pulled it up to the plane! 

I didn't get any pictures of the arrivals area at Fiumicino (it isn't very interesting), but I do have a funny story to leave this on. Upon getting to the passport control line (with hardly anyone in front of me -- the airport isn't very busy at 10 at night), I was directed into a lane where the border guard was in the middle of a conversation (in Italian, of course) on his cell phone. I figured I would just wait until he was done, but no, he just took my passport, scanned and stamped it, and tossed it back at me, before shooing me off without having ever said a word or seemingly paying attention to anything other than his phone call. I know Italian border guards are normally pretty lax, but that's a bit nuts even by their standards! 

Anyway, tomorrow I'll get to what was probably the thing I was most excited for on this trip!