Travelling to Zanzibar

First off, we'd like to introduce ourselves. We are all students at the Masters program in Marine Biology at Stockholm University, now doing our thesises for the department of Systems Ecology. Michaela is Swedish, has taken the Bachelors program in Biology and Earth Science and has only been outside of Europe to visit relatives in the Philippines. Elisa is Spanish, did her Bachelors degree in Marine Sciences in Spain and has never been outside Europe. Floriaan is Dutch, did a Bachelors degree in Coastal Zone Management from Holland and has never been outside of Europe.

Yesterday, on Monday, we flew from Stockholm to Istanbul to make a transit for our next flight to Dar-es-Salaam, the capital of Tanzania. At Arlanda airport we had our first problem: Both Floriaan's Swedish and Dutch debit cards did not work when he tried taking out US Dollars from the Exchange Office. We went to his Swedish bank's office at Arlanda Sky City and took care of the problem quite smoothly. The flight was uneventful with a screaming baby in the seat in front of us. Luckily, whenever the baby got a look at Floriaan's face she stopped screaming and just stared in awe at him. Another good thing on the plane was the free booze.

We arrived to Istanbul around 21:00 and started looking for a place to sleep on the airport since our next flight to Dar-es-Salaam would not take off until 18:10 on Tuesday. We found a "Transit information" desk at the airport and asked the woman there if she had any tips on how to entertain ourselves for 20 hours. She gave directions to a room downstairs which looked a bit like a basement with security control. We started thinking we had the wrong place, but luckily a man called for us and started handling our boarding passes. He said something about Turkish Airlines providing us with a free stay at a five-star hotel with free transport and breakfast, but it sounded like he was joking. The following hour we were being ushered around the airport by different Turkish Airlines staff, getting Turkish visas and so on. At one point a woman asked us "How many rooms would you like?" and we replied "One room for the three of us". Of course we want to share everything! Later we realised we could have gotten one room each for free. We ended up in a taxi which drove us through Istanbul for a very long time. Seeing Istanbul at night was very exciting since none of us has been in a Muslim country before this, but the most exciting part was when the taxi pulled over in front of the five-star hotel, with the flashy marble and glass entrance and the neat ushers welcoming us. "No way!" we all said, and with big smiles on our faces a man explained that someone will drive us back to the airport tomorrow afternoon. We installed ourselves in our room and then went down to the Lobby for drinks.


This morning we woke up in the comfy hotel beds to a great view of Istanbul from our window and enjoyed nice showers and a free Turkish breakfast buffet. Being stuffed after breakfast we took a nap and some tea in our room. Soon we'll be heading back to the airport and our flight to Africa.

Cheers from Istanbul!

Michaela, Elisa, Floriaan


For pictures of the hotel there's a website: http://www.akgunhotel.com/ImageGallery.aspx