Travel vlog by Kara and Nate Buchanan documenting their journey from New York (JFK) to the Maldives via Turkish Airlines business class (video uploaded June 17, 2018). The vlog covers the JFK Lufthansa lounge access, onboard business-class experience (Bentley amenity kit, meal service, 10-hour flight), arrival in Istanbul at ~5:00 AM and a 20-hour layover. During the layover they join Turkish Airlines' complimentary "Tour Istanbul" (available for layovers between 6 and 24 hours) visiting breakfast, the Hippodrome, exterior of the Blue Mosque (closed that day), Topkapi Palace, a spice/Islamic-art area, and the Grand Bazaar (noted as ~4,000 shops and ~30,000 daily workers). The video concludes with return to the lounge, a late-night flight to the Maldives, and arrival.
Questions this video answers
About 5:00 AM.
Approximately 20 hours.
Layovers between 6 and 24 hours.
About 10 hours ("This is home for the next 10 hours").
Over 4,000 shops and over 30,000 people working there daily.
Chapters
This time our amenity kits are from Bentley. This is Bentley fragrances. Is it like the car Bentley that has a fragrance?
Do you know?
Thank you very much.
Perfect. Thank you so much.
After five days in New York that absolutely flew by. We are back at the airport and about to start another very long travel day.
Today we are flying to my absolute dream destination of my life in Turkish Airlines business class. I can't believe.
The lounge is gorgeous. It smells yummy.
So if you're flying Turkish Airlines business class out of jfk, you get access to this awesome Lufthansa.
You should have to say it really fast.
Lufthansa to this awesome lounge. And it has incredible views of the Runway, delicious food. Off to get started.
Turkish Airlines flight.
Get boring passengers seating in business class. Also, any passengers with Star alliance go elite.
Here's our seat.
Six minutes.
This is home for the next 10 hours.
Not long enough drinks.
Enjoy.
This time our amenity kits are from Bentley. Fancy. Let's see here. Eye mask, no slip socks, bloods, toothbrush and toothpaste by diaper brush thingy that you use to put your shoes on.
Lotion.
And lip balm.
That's all.
This is a nice.
Why fly wi fly.
Miss Bana.
Yes.
Which one do you prefer here? I think the sea.
Absolutely.
Thank you so much.
Lunchtime. I'm starting with the mushroom soup and the salmon carpacho. And the baby salt and pepper shakers are back. They're magnetic to the plate. Bon appetit.
So after you've had your big delicious meal and you're ready to go into a food coma, they come and they put this nice cover over your bed. They give you a blanket and a big fluffy pillow. Neither one of us want to sleep right now because we want to stay awake and enjoy this business class experience. But when we arrive in Istanbul, it's going to be 5am and our next flight doesn't leave till 1am the next day. They have to be away for like 20 hours while we're in Turkey. So we should probably get some sleep.
As we are descending, make sure that your hand luggage is stowed in the overhead bins or under the seat in front of you. Please fasten your seat belt, put your seat back upright, close your tray table, open your window blind and stow your footrest.
Ladies and gentlemen and dear children, please, please keep your seatbelt fastened until the seat belt sign has been turned off. You may use your electronic devices. Please be careful while opening the overhead bins. When the aircraft reaches its final parking position, we would like to say goodbye and hope to meet you again. Thank you for flying with Turkish Airlines, a member of Star Alliance.
After a long and very enjoyable flight, we are back in Istanbul almost exactly a week later. Our plane landed at 5am this morning. We came straight to the survival lounge and had lots of coffee because today we're not just sitting in an airport lounge.
We actually have a 20 hour layover here in Istanbul. And Turkish Airlines has this really cool program called Tour Istanbul where if you have a layover between 6 and 24 hours, you can actually go do a free city tour. So we're going to spend six hours today going and seeing some of the biggest sites in the city, all completely for free.
We've actually been to this airport three times before, so we're super excited to actually leave this time and see the city.
Let's go.
So the first stop of the tour was for breakfast. It turns out in addition to being there is also food included and coffee, which is really good for us because right now our bodies think it's 3:45am.
Okay, cue super fast city tour.
This is the world's largest crowd of jewels.
Our next stop is the Hippodrome. Here you go.
The next stop is the Blue Mosque, but unfortunately we can't go inside today because it's closed.
And now we're gonna spend some time walking around this huge palace called Topkofa. Hello, hello, hello.
Lunchtime. That was delicious.
On to the next spice, the Islamic Cart museum.
Our last stop of the day is the Grand Bazaar, which is what we were most excited about seeing today. There are over 4,000 shops and over 30,000 people come to work here every day. So we're going to go get lost.
And just like that, we're back at the airport and back in our favorite Turkish Airlines lounge.
We packed a ton of stuff into today's tour, but I feel like we just barely scratched the surface of everything. Don't worry, we are definitely coming back to Turkey to spend more time here.
Now let's go get some Turkish people.
So this is actually our fourth time in this lounge. We've covered it extensively in three other videos. But in case you've never seen it before, let me tell you why we love this place. Food, Tea, cake, coffee, drinks, line, chefs, more chefs, A racetrack, piano, olive bar. Just look at this staircase. Oh, another chef. TVs, a movie room, a pool table and shower.
Oh, my selfie light. Oh, Both of my zippers and my backpack have officially broken.
Looks like I'm gonna look for a new backpack. At the Maldives.
This way. It is 1am we are about to board our last flight of this very long travel day. And in eight hours, we will be in the Maldives.
Enjoy your lemonades.
One last welcome drink. One last pair of slippers.
One last movie.
Ladies and gentlemen, and dear children, please keep your seatbelt fastened until the seatbelt sign has been turned off. We would like to say goodbye and hope to meet you again. Thank you for flying with Turkish Airlines, a member of Star Alliance.
After two full days of travel, we have finally arrived in the Maldives.
We're going to end this video here, but before we do, we wanted to say another huge thank you to Turkish Airlines for making it possible for us to go to the Shorty Awards. We were originally supposed to go from Bali to the Maldives. We just took a really long detour and they made that possible.
I can't believe it's already over.
I'm like a little sad, but at the same time, you can't be sad when you're in the Maldives. Okay, the next video, we're jumping on Sea Point. So if you're into that.
I'm sorry. Smacked you right in the face.
We've been sad that I smacked you in the face. But we've been more sad that we lost our music.
Wow.
I got outfit. I don't know. You can get back in doing it for the gram.
