I get up a little after 4 am on the 16th and drive to Albuquerque, where I meet Jon. We fly Albuquerque-Atlanta-New York-Istanbul and that takes about 23 hours. At JFK we have to carry our gear, several flight cases of stuff, from the Delta Terminal to the Turkish Air counter in the International Terminal, and we barely make the flight. The airport is not very well designed. The Turkish airplane has a strange and very bright colorscheme. Light blue and orange seats. We arrive in Istanbul in the morning of the 17th and are driven to the Kempinski Hotel, which is a former palace, built as the Ottoman empire was ending in around WW1. By 2pm we are exploring the city. The Bosperus flows right in front of our hotel and we can see Asia on the other bank.