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Saturday, 15 April. We were booked on a Turkish Airline flight from Istanbul to Adana. We thought we’d have a better chance of getting on the C-9 medevac flight there than we would in Izmir, the next stop west. The flight didn’t leave Istanbul until mid-afternoon, so we still had much of the day to see more of the city. We had already covered what we had planned in advance, so we thought we’d just start walking. We got as far as the Galata Bridge, when it suddenly occurred to me that we might be able to take a ferry up the Bosporus to the Black Sea. We were looking in our guide book to try to figure out how long it would take to reach the Black Sea when a Turkish man came up to us and asked, in German, if he could help us. We do fairly well with “travelers’ Deutsch” and asked him about the Bosporus ferry. He assured us that we’d be back in plenty of time to catch our flight. So we walked the short distance to the ferry stop on the Bosporus and caught the first ferry going north.
It was a beautiful day, and the trip was both pleasant and interesting. We sailed under the new Bosporus suspension bridge, due to open later that year. It will be Europe's longest suspension bridge (more than 3500 feet), and the only one to connect two continents (Europe and Asia). Once we got beyond Istanbul’s urban area, the villages were increasingly more picturesque. Eventually we passed Rumeli Hisari (European side), a huge fortress built by Sultan Mehmed II in 1451 as a step in his preparations to conquer Constantinople.
Soon after, the ferry stopped at Kanlica (Asian side), famous for its yogurt. The outside tables at the yogurt restaurant adjacent to the dock were crammed with people. As we left Kanklica, I was roaming the ferry looking for information on its schedule and finally found a schedule posted under a gangway (stairway). I knew that we were reaching the halfway point in our available time and that we had to start back for Istanbul soon. The schedule showed that we were still several stops from the Black Sea. I rushed back to Jane, and we got off at the next stop, Beykoz (Asian side).
We had what seemed like a long wait for the ferry heading south. When it came and I checked the schedule, it looked like we would probably miss our flight. Then I saw that we could get off the ferry at the stop north of central Istanbul. Not only was it actually closer to our hotel, but we would also save the time the ferry would take to get to the next stop. It seemed like a great idea until we got off the ferry. The area around that stop was mobbed with people leaving a soccer game that had just ended. There were dozens of taxis in the parking lot. I asked the first one about the fare to Taxim and was given an outrageous price ($10). In spite of our predicament, we walked away toward the next cab. The first driver chased after us and cut his price in half, so we got in the cab. For two or three blocks, the streets were filled with soccer fans, and the cab had to inch along at a pedestrian’s pace. Finally we got clear and sped to our hotel. By this time we had explained to the driver that we were in a hurry because we had to catch a flight. He offered to wait and take us to the airport for an additional $7.00 (compare to the $20 when we arrived). We gladly accepted, rushed up to our room to get our luggage, checked out, and were on our way in less than ten minutes. We made our flight with half an hour to spare. Turkish Airlines is heavily subsidized by the government, and fares within the country are quite low. That, in turn, means that almost anyone who needs to travel very far can afford to fly. Consequently, the passengers on our flight included all sorts of people, from businessmen dressed in suits to peasants from the countryside wearing traditional (folk) costumes. It was a wider variety of dress than we had seen anywhere in Istanbul. The flight had a stop in Ankara en route. We had a nice view of the city as we landed. In a short time we were off to Adana and arrived while there was still daylight. We took a taxi to nearby Incirlik Air Base, where we signed up for the morning medevac flight back to Frankfurt. There were plenty of seats available. We were even able to get overnight accommodations in the Visiting Officers Quarters. We had dinner at the Officers’ Club. Sunday, 16 April. The medevac C-9 left after 10:00, so we had time for a leisurely breakfast. As is always the case when flying space-available, there was a chance that we could be bumped off the flight at Izmir (Cigli Air Base) or Athens (Hellenikon Air Base), the two stops on the way to Frankfurt. However, there was no problem. They even served airline-type meals on the plane. It was about 21:00 when we arrived at Rhein-Main Air Base outside Frankfurt. Our car was there and we drove to our quarters in Bad Vilbel, glad to be able to sleep in our own beds. When we totaled up what we had spent on the trip, it came to about $700, much of it on purchases.
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