HOLIDAYS

Posh nosh

At last, the day we have been waiting for for ages arrived, Tuesday 15th August - holiday day!  Hurray!  Of course it went past fast, but not as fast as Wednesday which didn't really happen at all for us.

So, it started off slow, with some chores to do around the village, then we locked our suitcases, packed the car and headed towards Manchester Airport, keeping in mind the horrific security Tom and I experienced last year on our way to Amsterdam, so we made sure we had time in hand.  We were the first to check in and then we got to go through the priority lanes because we were business class - oh we could get used to this!

Security wasn't as manic as last year, although Matt got pulled up for a Wallet Ninja in his wallet - he completely forgot he had it, well he doesn't now!  Tom and I got through with no bother (last year, I got pulled up for having a pack of cards and Tom got pulled up for having a toy tractor?!)

We then headed to the lounge (another privilege of travelling business class).  It was a bit busy, but we got great seats from which a small boy could watch planes take off and leave, he was so enthralled that time went very quickly.  We enjoyed the 'free' hospitality.  Our flight took off more or less on time, and was quite uneventful.  We had nice big comfortable seats, and a really good meal of meze and lamb chops with polenta - complete with a very cute salt and pepper set.

Business class lounge at Istanbul

We arrived on time, with no terminal to change, we went straight to the lounge (not easy to find as we didn't know what it was called).  Oh my word, the Business Class Lounge at Istanbul airport was AMAZING, first of all it was absolutely enormous - on 3 levels, think it can take over 1,000 passengers with ease.  It was peppered with food stations and drink stations - you could help yourself to anything you wished, including the alcohol - in Manchester you were only allowed 1 or 2 alcoholic drinks, which you had to queue up for and were served according to the discretion of the staff - says a lot about the drinking habits of the Brits vs the drinking habits of the Turks!


I went for a look around, I found a cake station, a baclava station, a nut station, coffee station, a tea station (where you could blend your own tea!), chefs ready to cook you dishes to order, plenty of salad stations.  There was a Scalextric with Istanbul buildings around it, a football game, a golf game and get this: bedrooms and showers - all free to Turkish Airlines Business Class passengers.  Such a shame it was midnight and we were well fed on the flight over.  Matt helped himself to single malt whisky and we both had some apple strudel - well we had to have something!  We have 7.5 hours here on the way back, so will use the showers and enjoy relaxing in the area - what a place!  We were sad to leave.

All tucked in

However, not for long, as we boarded the business class section of the plane to Kuala Lumpur.  Huge big seats which looked like they would go flat, loads of space for storage, in fact this is the first time I have flown ever where I didn't have to store anything overhead.  We were greeted with welcome drinks, and told to let them know if we needed anything.  We were given very posh headphones, a wash kit, slippers etc etc.  All very lovely.  A chef then came to take our order for dinner and we pre-ordered for breakfast.  We were asked of course if we wanted to be woken for breakfast.  All very good.  Although we didn't need feeding we had dinner - we had paid for it after all.  So another plate of meze for me followed by a chicken and rice dish whilst the boys had ebi tagliatelle.

We then got ready for bed, yes bed, on a plane!  We would have been very excited if it wasn't for the fact we were so tired.  The seats did convert into flat beds and we were given thin quilts to snuggle down with.  Tom was asleep in minutes.  I managed an hour or so as did Matt.  The ambient noise reminded me of being in hospital which was slightly freaky, also it got really hot at one point, however, I was lying flat on a plane, it was delicious and quite easily the best ever long haul flight I have ever been on, not once did I look at the clock and be frustrated at how slowly the time was going, I was almost sad it was over.

Matt and I got our bags really quickly, we had to wait ages for Tom's, until he discovered that it had been taken off the conveyor belt by some staff and put in a pile!  I had looked earlier just in case it was there and missed it - oops, poor Tom was beginning to fret about it.

The view from one of our pools.

We got the KLIA Ekspres train into KL Sentral and then the LTR to KLCC where we came up into a huge shopping mall, we then wheeled our suitcases through the crowds and found our apartment block - literally 5 minutes walk away from the Petronas twin towers - couldn't ask for a more central position,  We are on the same floor as the swimming pools - yes pools: there are 3 of them and a play area for children.  We got straight into our swimming costumes and into the pool - it was glorious.  Get this, one of the pools looks straight at one of the twin towers which was all lit up.

We had showers and then headed back to the mall to find the food area.  We found ourselves a table in Little Penang and had Malay food.  Matt's was a spicy chicken curry thing, Tom had fried rice and I had a bowl of noodles in soup.  All very good, we were all hungry.  We then looked around some of the shops - Matt and Tom both bought themselves a top from Muji.  Soon it reached 10pm and all the shops were closing, we quickly found a supermarket and got ourselves some pastries for breakfast and then headed outside.  We were just in time for a wonderful fountain and light show.  We then headed home and collapsed into bed.