Istanbul February 2026

Boarded what can only be described as the Turkish version of Ryanair — a complete game of Russian roulette with the seat allocation because we hadn’t booked in advance. For a brief, glorious moment we thought we’d won the lottery when we were assigned seats together… only to then be moved apart at the gate. Classic.

But plot twist: when we finally sat down, we realised we’d both been reassigned to window exit-row seats — just one row apart. Extra legroom and a view. Honestly, we couldn’t have picked better seats if we’d tried. Travel karma restored ✈️ Even more so when the man next to me asked to swap with Richard so we were sat together.Read more