Around the world in 40 days but no Gallipoli

[Flying mermaid]

Of course no trip to Milan would be complete without a visit to La Scala. We don't know enough about opera to recognise all the paintings, but I did recognise Maria Callas (not shown).

 

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Our meal at Trattoria Milanese

 

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For our last night we decided to head for Via Soferino to go to either Dry or Pisacco. Things went horribly wrong and we wandered off Soferino. Once we discovered this rather than pull out my map I got cranky and we went back to a set of restaurants we had seen earlier. we chose the New Art cafe and the people were terrific, the food was good, so what more could you want. After the meal I did look at my map and found we were nearly there.....Cost for 2 courses and a 1/2 bottle of wine was $89. I particularly enjoyed the Minestrone soup. Our waiter looks serious, but he was quite charming.

 

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Our final train trip in Italy was Milan to Rome. Some very lush countryside.

 

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From Rome Termini we took the fast train to the airport, checked into the hotel and went into Rome for a few hours. We had to be up at 4am as we were worried about getting through security, so we planned to get some room service, iron some clothes and have an early night.

We had spent 5 days in Rome in 2002, so we just went to the Coliseum and the Forum. The Forum seemed much more extensive than before.

I have included a photo of the Hilton Foyer area and also a random girl at Termini - she looked like she was settled in for a long time.

 

[Flying mermaid]

We were just about to go to sleep when I decided to check my flights at qantas.com. I was totally shocked to see we had been downgraded to business for our LAX-SYD leg. I immediately turned to AFF to see why and found out there was an A380 out of commission. I checked my email to see if any communication from Qantas, but no there wasn't. I phoned the Rome office and was told there was no F availability for that day. It wasn't helped by having my mobile kept cutting out, which meant each time I phoned I got someone different. Anyway after many hours of unhelpful people both in Rome and Sydney, I finally got a girl who was prepared to rebook us via DFW - currently a totally empty F class.

I am still really bitter with Qantas, as is Mr FM. He has been off Qantas for awhile - he doesn't believe they are good any more. I really love the staff though and have been insisting on booking with them, but not any more. We pay for our tickets for international and use points for the ankle biters, or for domestic flights, so the whole status game has minimal interest for us. We have one more international booking with Qantas and I will be LTG anyway, so we will be flying a lot more with Emirates and exploring other options such as Etihad, SQ and other! It could have been handled in a way that didn't create so much stress for us, but it wasn't - we book directly with Qantas so they pay no travel agent commissions and make max $ but give nothing back. OK rant over

 

[amaroo]

Sorry to read that.

Now back online so look foward to catching up with your travel.

BTW that cruise ship spent the 24th at Canakkale and then sailed off Anzac Cove after the Naval pass and the service was completed.

 

[Flying mermaid]

Sorry to read that.

Now back online so look foward to catching up with your travel.

BTW that cruise ship spent the 24th at Canakkale and then sailed off Anzac Cove after the Naval pass and the service was completed.

I think it should have been at Canakkale something like 21 to 25 and arrived back today - we saw it this afternoon This evening was a big ball at the convention centre. Have chatted to a few people today who were down at Gallipoli - seems to have been very moving albeit tiring. One group I spoke to didn't get back on their bus until 7pm yesterday

 

[amaroo]

I think it should have been at Canakkale something like 21 to 25 and arrived back today - we saw it this afternoon This evening was a big ball at the convention centre. Have chatted to a few people today who were down at Gallipoli - seems to have been very moving albeit tiring. One group I spoke to didn't get back on their bus until 7pm yesterday

They closed the ferry at 3pm-7pm so that stuffed quite a few plans. Met someone that didn't arrive at the service until 3.30am. We sat down at 7pm.

Spoke to a few guys today that didn't get back to Istanbul until 7am

Tiring is the word!

 

[Flying mermaid]

in spite of almost no sleep due to the Qantas drama, we were up at 4am. We checked out just before 5am and had a dream run. Raced down to T3 and the J checkin was totally empty. Fast track was quite speedy, although there were a number of paths open for the ordinary track and they were getting through just as fast. We were sitting in the BA lounge by 5:20. Plenty of food - fruit, cereals, cheese, cold meat, yoghurt and pastries. Seemed to be a range of alcohol but didn't look too closely.

BA does PB in the same way as AA does i.e. calls for J plus status to board first. I saw a couple of people who tried to go through asked to wait. How hard can it be?

In T5 there was a charming BA attendant who steered us to fast track. We would have been through security quite quickly, except Mr FM's back pack containing all his camera gear was sent to the checking area. This is seriously inefficient. They have one small area for checking. The guy in front of us had a big carryon case. After they had finished checking it, everyone stood around chatting while he very slowly repacked his case! Surely it is not that hard to have 2 areas one for repacking and one for checking. A slightly bigger counter area would mean a much faster throughput - the counter area actually existed but was piled with trays and other junk. The woman behind us got rather hysterical, as she had a connection (as did all of us)..

We finally made it to the F lounge at South Lounge (North lounge doesn't seem to have one). I had a nice glass of bubbly and a pastry, but there was an array of hot food on a buffet, as well as a menu where you could order hot dishes (eggs Florentine etc). Mr FM and I felt quality and choice was down a bit from say 2009 when we went through T5 at breakfast time.

Flight to Istanbul was also good - we had a terrific crew on both planes. Had the Monopole Blue Top champagne on the Istanbul leg - OK but I prefer the Pommery they used to have. This was Brut but tasted a little sweet to me.

Have pictures of the plane and meal which I will post tomorrow hopefully.

Generally we felt the seating was poor, but the rest of the product - service and meals was good.

 

[Flying mermaid]

They closed the ferry at 3pm-7pm so that stuffed quite a few plans. Met someone that didn't arrive at the service until 3.30am. We sat down at 7pm.

Spoke to a few guys today that didn't get back to Istanbul until 7am 

Tiring is the word!

I guess there will be a lot of tales to be told - once the tiredness is over there will be all the fun of telling the horror stories

 

[juddles]

For our last night we decided to head for Via Soferino to go to either Dry or Pisacco. Things went horribly wrong and we wandered off Soferino. Once we discovered this rather than pull out my map I got cranky and we went back to a set of restaurants we had seen earlier. we chose the New Art cafe and the people were terrific, the food was good, so what more could you want. After the meal I did look at my map and found we were nearly there.....Cost for 2 courses and a 1/2 bottle of wine was $89. I particularly enjoyed the Minestrone soup. Our waiter looks serious, but he was quite charming.

FM, amazing photos! Love them!! Thank you for sharing

 

[TheRealTMA]

We were just about to go to sleep when I decided to check my flights at qantas.com. I was totally shocked to see we had been downgraded to business for our LAX-SYD leg. I immediately turned to AFF to see why and found out there was an A380 out of commission. I checked my email to see if any communication from Qantas, but no there wasn't. I phoned the Rome office and was told there was no F availability for that day. It wasn't helped by having my mobile kept cutting out, which meant each time I phoned I got someone different. Anyway after many hours of unhelpful people both in Rome and Sydney, I finally got a girl who was prepared to rebook us via DFW - currently a totally empty F class.

I am still really bitter with Qantas, as is Mr FM. He has been off Qantas for awhile - he doesn't believe they are good any more. I really love the staff though and have been insisting on booking with them, but not any more. We pay for our tickets for international and use points for the ankle biters, or for domestic flights, so the whole status game has minimal interest for us. We have one more international booking with Qantas and I will be LTG anyway, so we will be flying a lot more with Emirates and exploring other options such as Etihad, SQ and other! It could have been handled in a way that didn't create so much stress for us, but it wasn't - we book directly with Qantas so they pay no travel agent commissions and make max $ but give nothing back. OK rant over

Phew! Lucky escape!

 

[Flying mermaid]

So as requested some photos of BA CE. This was an A 320 - basically the same as Y, except they have a sort of tray that sits on the middle seat. Gives more elbow space, but not leg space. Breakfast was rather nice - I am always a bit suspicious of plane eggs, but these were good.

 

[Flying mermaid]

Then the 767 - once again not all that much leg space. Mr FM had fish and I had a lovely spicy chicken.

 

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Getting through Immigration was reasonably quick - we had fast track passes and although there was a reasonable queue it was nothing like the ordinary one. Our Four Seasons minder was there to greet us and take us to the car and we thought this is easy. Then we hit the peak hour traffic Eventually things came to a total halt and our driver and Serdal conferred and decided to turn around and hit the side streets. Well that was fun. I have no idea how it worked! The roads appeared to be two way but with all the cars parked on the side there was no room. Some sort of system prevailed similar to going across a one car width bridge. However it broke down when someone parked in such a way that there was no proper view and so we ended up with the opposing lines of traffic meeting in the middle. There was a huge altercation between the offender and another driver (one calling the other the son of a coyote according to Serdal). Anyway somehow we got through and were at the Four Seasons only 2 hours after leaving the airport. We became quite friendly with Serdal, exchanging our life histories and seeing photos of his cats.

 

[Flying mermaid]

one of the positives about the boat fiasco, was that it gave us the opportunity to stay at the Four Seasons again. We had loved it when we stayed there in 2009 and it is just as beautiful.

 

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Some photos from the roof top bar at the FS

 

[Flying mermaid]

When we were in Istanbul before it was late autumn. The plus was that the city was quite empty of tourists. However Istanbul in the Spring is glorious with flowers. (almost worth the crowds).

 

[Flying mermaid]

The Grand Bazaar - always a crazy experience. This time we discovered there is actually a map to the Grand Bazaar with a grid system and all the streets listed. With this key roaming around became a snap!