The Cappadocia region has two airports, Nevsehir and Kayseri; also, Istanbul has two airports, Ataturk and Gokcen. Since we planned three full days at Cappadocia, we would be arriving at night, which meant we preferred the Ataturk Airport with its metro access much more than the distant Gokcen airport on the other side of the channel. Although Nevsehir Airport was closer to Goreme than Kayseri, it doesn’t make too much a difference, as both airports require shuttle services at similar prices. After that, our only choice seemed to be the three times daily service of Turkish Airlines to/from Nevsehir Airport.
I had to say, since both ends of our flight were at the better airports, plus Turkish Airlines was not the big-sale-onboard budget carriers, the price of our ticket did seemed a little bit high compared with our other transportations in Turkey.
This post follows the previous one about flight QR241 from Doha to Istanbul Gokcen.
About my connection.
I was somehow limited by our fares that our outbound flight could only be to this remote airport on the Asian side of Istanbul, with virtually little public transport. So, I deemed the only way to make this work was to immediately fly to our next stop. Similar to most tourists to Turkey, our next stop could be either Goreme or Izmir, depending on whether we took the cycle of cities (Goreme, Antalya, Fethiye, etc) clockwise or anti-clockwise. Since my father had been and was hypercritical about connection times, he picked Izmir with 140-minute transit over Goreme with 120-minute transit. So our next flight was Pegasus Airlines 4122 to Izmir.
Summer of 2016.
For reasons I myself find hard to comprehend (so not to mention to explain), I got a four-week vacuum after visiting Cornell. And for similar reasons beyond my comprehension, my parents have been more than eager for a trip this summer to Tibet, also they have been more than displeased for my unwillingness to disclose my summer itineraries and negotiate the Tibet trip. Figuring out there’s no way for me to stay in Beijing for four weeks without offending them in one way or another. So after knowing their urge was for a trip in general, and not for the 48-hour-train away independence-prone Tibet offering meandering ticket lines and ten-day Jeep-safari featuring sleeping-bag experience and Chinese-standard tourism service (a.k.a. nothing) and Internet censorship, it’s my turn to pick destinations.
(I have to say, you got breathtaking views in return for the sleeping-bagy jeep safaris.)
Since our previous flight AA3365 arrived basically on time at Chicago O'Hare, we were left with 5 hours for our connection. What's more, FlightAware.com told me that our aircraft has quite some delay for its previous flight coming from San Francisco, which meant it's guaranteed to arrive late at O'Hare, so our connection could well be quite longer.
The month-long Cornell program finally came to an end, as the wonderful lady driver of our shuttle dropped us off roughly three hours before departure. Amazingly, the American Airlines Check-in Counters were open, although we waited for like five minutes before two agents appeared.
Since Syracuse Hancock Airport was a modestly-sized regional international airport (hell they got Air Canada Services to/from Toronto), there weren't many interesting planes to spot. So after securities, I killed time, by writing homework essays on my laptop.
It was a school-sponsored month-long summer program at Cornell University.
Originally, given AsiaMiles’ double mileage promotion for students residing in China Mainland, I was more than eager to persuade the travel agency to book me on Cathay Pacific to New York or Chicago, and then on a separate ticket to Ithaca. However, school regulations demanded that I must went through extra bureaucratic procedures for them to pay for my separate tickets.
So that spelt the end of Cathay Pacific, leaving me only the choice of three major US carriers. Since AA’s itinerary has a longer layover at Chicago O’Hare, and it was a Boeing 787 which I haven’t flown on before, I picked American Airlines.
By the way, Ithaca airport was closed for runway maintenance, so we actually flown to Syracuse, where Cornell University arranged shuttle services for us.
