Birinci Kültür

We woke up to a cool day with clear skies. It was 56F in Samsun when we left the condo with Kerim, who drove us to SZF.

Mui and I prefer to arrive at the airport around two hours before a flight. Not so today. Taking our cue from Kerim, who said it would take us about ½-hour to get to the airport as there would be little to no traffic at that hour, we arrived just an hour before our 8:30a flight. As small as the airport is, that worked out OK

Since we had already checked in online, we had nothing to do but continue to the gate. Except that it wasn’t clear which gate we were supposed to go to. So, we asked a guy at the security checkpoint for gate 1 if that was the right place. He said to go to gate 2 for our Sun Express flight. Not wanting to take a middle seat between people already in the gate area, we opted to just get in line for the short wait before boarding was called.

At SZF, there are no jetways. Passengers go through the boarding gate and directly onto the tarmac, and simply walk to the airplane. We were amongst the first passengers to board the aircraft and soon we were settled in our XLeg exit row seats — 18B/C.

Unlike our inbound flight to SZF, this 737-800 was not packed. In fact, we had the three seats on our side of row 18 all to ourselves. Others wanted to move to exit row seats once boarding was completed, but the cabin crew stopped them from doing so since those seats are only available if you pay the higher airfare. I was happy to see this as it is not otherwise fair to those who pay for the privilege of those seats.

Soon after the aircraft leveled off, our breakfast was served. As has been the case on every Sun Express flight we’ve been on thus far, we were the only ones with meal service, though others could purchase from the service cart … and did.

Despite the slight delay leaving SZF, we landed at ADB 10 minutes ahead of schedule. With no checked bags to worry about, we walked directly to İzban to take the train into Alsancak and then transferred to the tram to get home. Again … easy peasy … and far less crowded than it was outbound because of our mid-morning arrival.

The bags are now unpacked; the laundry done. I am now going to head over to mom’s for afternoon tea. Mui will join us for dinner. Thus, we’ll back to our daily routine … at least for a while.Read more