Day 1 – transit

Three hours of sleep and a laundry drier that decided to die on the day of our flight brought us to the Ben Gurion airport tired as hell.

At the airport the line to check-in the flight just refused to move, 30 min in the queue got Ira’s (my wife) family to us, they were as always a bit late, so actually we got lucky that the queue was that slow :)

We made a photo for Facebook saying goodbye to our old friends and hello to our journey which we hope will be full of new adventures people and places.

The flight to Istanbul was short and very interesting. We got the nice emergency exit seats and an Israeli “Palestinian”, as he defined himself, historian PHD named Ahmed Amara.

Ahmed is doing a pro-palestinian research and traveling to Ankara to give an anti-Israeli talk. It was an interesting conversation which I usually try to avoid about history and politics. Ahmed was very anti-Israeli oriented which made it vey hard for me to listen to the other side, although I was curious to hear it, in the end we agreed to disagree, shook hands and went on our ways to Istanbul.

Istanbul made us very curious especially after the warm recommendations from our friend Yulia, so we decided to take a long connection there on our way to Tbilisi. At the time before our last military operation Protective Edge it looked like a good idea. Watching the news, however, caused us to rethink whether we even want to fly through Turkey. After few conversations we understood that the situation is not as bad as presented by the media and we can go out in Istanbul as Russians.

It turned up as a really good idea. From Sabiha airport there is a shuttle service (13TL – 6$) to Taxim square and we hang out on Istiklal street eating doner and baklawa.

chest nuts on fire - yammi

All people have hobbies 

Taxim square can greet you with flowers

our posse that will repeat itself

An interesting school

The main street

A nice donner , and a smiling chef 

selfieeee

hope to take this picture in color one day

Ira found fire cooked chestnuts what brought her back to her childhood. Three hours spent in a really nice way. The way back to the airport was one good long deep sleep.

At the airport we shifted our luggage so it won’t be overweight. Apparently a woman can take a lady bag in addition to a backpack, and a man can take a laptop bag.

We then spent 3 hours in a really nice cafe with free internet, having a great conversation with an Israeli guy Eden who is running Ultra-marathons and with whom we ended up to share a lot of friends and a bottle of Jagger after this wait.

A one hour late flight took us to Tbilisi – Mshvidobas Tbilisi !!!