Turkish (Non-)Delight
Apr. 15th, 2011 06:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tj_teejayOh, how I've missed this. (Not.) Business meetings are always blah. And even though we had Wednesday morning to actually look at some of the city, all I got to see was left and right of the Bosporus. The initial plan was to take a 1 1/2 hour boat tour along the Bosporus. But apparently we took the wrong boat, because the one we boarded took us all the way to the Asian side of Istanbul, up where the Black Sea begins. The one way trip took 1 1/2 hours alone.
And as if that wasn't bad enough, they threw us off the boat around 1 PM, telling us the boat back wouldn't go before 3 PM. Awesome. We had a meeting in the hotel at 3. A taxi would have cost us 80 EUR and there were no busses or other alternatives. More awesome. So we said, fuck the meeting, we're taking the boat back (which was already paid for, to boot).
At least we got the chance to walk up the hill to the remnants of an old castle and actually saw the Black Sea. And while it was a nice trip, I would have much rather gone to the Old Town and looked at the Blue Mosque and the Hagia Sophia. I don't feel like I've seen anything of Istanbul except water and rather unimpressive buildings from very far away. There was nothing remotely exciting about that. So, yeah, there goes another business trip to a beautiful location of which I have seen exactly zilch and a half.
I'm flying back Saturday evening, and the meeting lasts until after lunch. There won't be enough time to go look at anything on Saturday because the hotel is way outside the city and we're being taken to the airport around 4. Unless we try to squeeze in some power sightseeing, but my best bet is that we'll be totally dead after the meeting and will not have much zest or energy for anything of the sort.
The highlight of my week is probably geeking out over Monty Python's The Holy Grail with Tristan from the UK. There's only few people who will get two grown-up, unintoxicated people giggling over quoting random lines from the movie. But we had so much fun. Man, I need to watch that movie again. It's been ages, and my memory for quoting the lines verbatim has diminished considerably. Fun fact no. 2 about Tristan (no. 1 being that he could quote the movie too damn well): He was named after Tristan Farnon. Apparently his parents really loved James Herriot. (I asked. He doesn't have a brother called Siegfried, however.)
In another 15 minutes, I'm off to tonight's off-site dinner. Which is one of the other bad things about meetings like this. An overabundance of yummy food offers too much temptation. You're constantly on the brink of having eaten too much. According to my best estimate, the carb intake of the past three days amounts to what I usually eat in a whole week. This is bad. Very bad. (Though I did go for the Coke Zero instead of the regular one -- which I usually prefer.)
Okay, time that I got back into my dressy clothes. And, yes, I did take photos on Wednesday, but they're not spectacular. I might post a few at some point.
And as if that wasn't bad enough, they threw us off the boat around 1 PM, telling us the boat back wouldn't go before 3 PM. Awesome. We had a meeting in the hotel at 3. A taxi would have cost us 80 EUR and there were no busses or other alternatives. More awesome. So we said, fuck the meeting, we're taking the boat back (which was already paid for, to boot).
At least we got the chance to walk up the hill to the remnants of an old castle and actually saw the Black Sea. And while it was a nice trip, I would have much rather gone to the Old Town and looked at the Blue Mosque and the Hagia Sophia. I don't feel like I've seen anything of Istanbul except water and rather unimpressive buildings from very far away. There was nothing remotely exciting about that. So, yeah, there goes another business trip to a beautiful location of which I have seen exactly zilch and a half.
I'm flying back Saturday evening, and the meeting lasts until after lunch. There won't be enough time to go look at anything on Saturday because the hotel is way outside the city and we're being taken to the airport around 4. Unless we try to squeeze in some power sightseeing, but my best bet is that we'll be totally dead after the meeting and will not have much zest or energy for anything of the sort.
The highlight of my week is probably geeking out over Monty Python's The Holy Grail with Tristan from the UK. There's only few people who will get two grown-up, unintoxicated people giggling over quoting random lines from the movie. But we had so much fun. Man, I need to watch that movie again. It's been ages, and my memory for quoting the lines verbatim has diminished considerably. Fun fact no. 2 about Tristan (no. 1 being that he could quote the movie too damn well): He was named after Tristan Farnon. Apparently his parents really loved James Herriot. (I asked. He doesn't have a brother called Siegfried, however.)
In another 15 minutes, I'm off to tonight's off-site dinner. Which is one of the other bad things about meetings like this. An overabundance of yummy food offers too much temptation. You're constantly on the brink of having eaten too much. According to my best estimate, the carb intake of the past three days amounts to what I usually eat in a whole week. This is bad. Very bad. (Though I did go for the Coke Zero instead of the regular one -- which I usually prefer.)
Okay, time that I got back into my dressy clothes. And, yes, I did take photos on Wednesday, but they're not spectacular. I might post a few at some point.
