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Doha/Istanbul 27 October 


“A hangover suggests a great night, jet lag suggests a great adventure.”


I’m writing this on the first leg of the trip, sitting in my comfy pod having slept for about 5 hours.  1 hour complimentary wifi is offered so I joined up about an hour ago and the first thing to drop into my inbox was from Louise with her Wordle score for the day!!!! I was able to send a couple of messages to my girls but other than that not much joy - internet was patchy.  

Dinner was lovely, but having an entree of QLD prawns then baked WA lobster and a glass of wine after midnight is too late!  While waiting for my icecream to thaw I had a coffee and must have dozed off as oops! suddenly there’s coffee all over me!!!  And the iPad! 

We’ve had a few flights with Qatar and have to say they’re pretty good!  Service was outstanding.  It’s very handy travelling with someone with a walking stick and bad knees as we had a super short connection in Doha and we were quickly put on a motorised vehicle and whisked to the next boarding gate.  Hoards of people everywhere, I guess usual for this part of the world but also people arriving for the World Cup in November.  The aircraft safety feature videos are hilarious, all about the team obeying the rules!! 

So it’s breakfast again on this 4 hour flight to Istanbul.  

We’re now at the Pera Palace Hotel, arrived half an hour ago.  Its a very old hotel with so much history!  Built in 1892 for the purpose of hosting passengers on the Orient Express it was named after ‘Pera’ where it is located and it holds the title of the the oldest European hotel in Turkey.  

The hotel was the first building in the Ottoman Empire to be powered by electricity, other than the imperial palaces and it was the only address in the city to provide hot running water for its guests and was home to the first electric elevator in Constantinople. It was also the second electric elevator in Europe.

One of the hotel's first owners were the Ottoman-Armenian Esayan family.

Henry Pulling and his aunt Augusta Bertram, protagonists of Graham Greene's 1969 novel, Travels With My Aunt, stayed at the Pera Palace Hotel during their Istanbul adventure.

In Ernest Hemingway's short story The Snows of Kilimanjaro, the main character, writer Harry, stays at the Pera Palace Hotel while serving in the military during the Allied occupation of Constantinople in World War I.

 Agatha Christie's 1934 novel Murder on the Orient Express was allegedly written in the Pera Palace Hotel. The hotel maintains Christie's room as a memorial to the author.

The hotel serves as the main setting for the show Midnight at the Pera Palace, which was released on Netflix in March 2022. The hotel is where Tilda Swinton’s character stays in Istanbul in the film Three Thousand Years of Longing.

And so now, the Swinburnes are here!  Plenty of history there!!!! 

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