Day One

When I woke up and looked outside, everything was covered in a dense fog. My plane left at eleven in the morning, and there was construction work on the railways into town, so I had to leave early to catch the replacement bus.

The views were great, low-hanging fog covering the fields and farms. It was only at the airport that I realized fog is nice to look at but not great for landing a huge amount of planes.

Amsterdam

My eleven o'clock flight got delayed, and thanks to flight radar, I could also see that the plane wasn't even on the way yet. So, I found a nice spot to view the activity on the platforms and waited for the new departure times.

Around 2 in the afternoon, the flight arrived, and not long after, we could board. However, we missed our departure slot and had to wait an hour on the plane before we could depart. This also crushed any hope of catching the connecting flight from Istanbul to Tel Aviv, as the layover was 2 hours.

Istanbul

In Istanbul, I was greeted by a Turkish Airlines employee who handed me a new ticket for a later flight to Tel Aviv. The original flight was supposed to take off around five in the afternoon, this one at half past one in the morning... from the other Istanbul Airport.

Together with about 12 other passengers, we were guided through immigration, customs and onto a shuttle bus to take us to the "Main" Istanbul airport. The ride took about an hour, and I only had about an hour before the departing flight. It's time to scrounge up some meal vouchers and get dinner.

Tel Aviv

I took a taxi into town and was at the hotel around five in the morning. A great time to realize that the hotel front desk was closed till eight. (I knew about this, but it was fine on the original schedule).