Turkey Trip Details Falling Into Place!

In my excitement about my Christmas in Rome trip I was temporarily neglecting my Turkey trip plans...but no more!

I've booked my flight to Istanbul for September 2007. CL and I got round trip tickets to Istanbul instead of an open jaw because we decided after the group tour ends in Kusadasi, Turkey we will fly back to Istanbul for 4 extra days to explore the city. The group tour starts in Istanbul and we will be flying in a day before the tour starts so with the 4 days at the end of tour we will have a total of 8 days in Istanbul...plenty of time to explore this city.

We also decided on the return flight home to have an overnight layover in NYC. We will get to spend an evening in the Big Apple after a 12(ish) hour direct flight from Istanbul and a morning before we have to fly back home. I like that we are breaking this up instead of flying directly home from Istanbul, which would have been close to 24 hours in transit!

I've booked the first night in Istanbul with the same hotel we will be staying at on the group tour. It's the Best Western Obelisk Hotel in the Sultanhamet area of Istanbul...and with the tour group discount we are getting the room for 68Euro per night. We contemplated staying in that hotel again for our 4 day return to Istanbul but I found some other hotel options through my research and came up with the Hotel Uyan in the Sultanhamet area for 90Euro per night (if we pay in cash we will get an 8% discount!), but it's had rave reviews on Fodors and Trip Advisor so we decided to book it. And the great thing about both these hotels is that they provide complementary pick up at the airport, which we will need for both stays.

Now that the hotels and trans-Atlantic airfare are squared away the only thing I have left to coordinate for the Turkey trip is the one way flight from Izmir (closest airport to Kusadasi where the tour ends) to Istanbul. There are several options for this...2 low cost air carriers which haven't published the schedules for October 2007 and Turkish Airlines. It looks like we will be able to get a fairly inexpensive airfare for this short flight (takes about an hour)...I think the price will be around $60.00, not too bad! The only other loose ends to tie up will be a hotel for the layover in NYC, but I will work on that during the summer and maybe get some help there with a former boss from one of my old hotels...keeping fingers crossed on that one! And coordinating transportation to and from the airport here at home.

All this planning has been done so far without a guidebook! Gotta love the internet! I determined that there are several Turkey guidebooks which will have new editions published in the spring, so I don't want to buy a guidebook now that is 2 years old...I am patiently waiting for April to roll around when I can get my hands on the "latest and greatest" edition of a Turkey guidebook! :) Yes, I know a bit "anal" but hey, that's me when planning a trip.

So, although I have a good grasp on hotels and flights my "top things to do" haven't been determined yet...that's where the guidebooks will come in!

I'm happy to look at my "trip coordination" list and see it getting smaller!

Well, only 8 more months to read as much as I can on Turkey, and of course start trolling the airline websites for prices to Rome for Christmas...why do I always keep coming back to that Rome trip...hmmmmmm....