Iluvcruising2

We arrived at Istanbul airport in good time. Our next flight (Istanbul to Singapore) was scheduled to depart at 0150hrs and we had arrived before 2300hrs the night before. So we decided to look for the same Primeclass CIP Lounge and hang around there for a couple of hours, just to chill. This first video shows us walking to look for the Primeclass CIP Lounge, which is also a Priority Pass lounge. The lounge was located at one corner of the airport, below a food court.

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Well, the lounge didn't serve burgers and my kids wanted some burgers. So the easiest way to get them was to step outside to buy some burgers from Burger King. Truth be told, the airport felt very different outside the lounge. It was crowded! Not sure why there was only one counter opened when there were so many people and the crowds looked to get a bit out of control, but things soon settled down. Anyway, I got my burgers and brought them back to the lounge. Definitely not cheap, but hey, this was an airport after all.

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Soon it was time for our flight. Hanging around in the Gatwick restricted area wasn't too bad. We quickly found our way to the gates for the London Gatwick to Istanbul service on Turkish Airways. I think they fly thrice a day, and ours was the third flight of the day, flight TK1998. It was a single aisle Airbus A321 aircraft. We were seated one row behind the emergency row seats and the legroom in that row was awesome. Not sure how to get those seats, maybe you got to pay more. The flight was about 3 hours and a hot meal was served - some Turkish minced meat on rice. Taste was not bad. After the meal, I settled down to get some rest.

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Alright, after that distraction, it was back to air travel. First, we had to get ourselves to London Gatwick. At first, we thought of the Gatwick Express, but after some research realised that there were cheaper options that cost much less and took just as fast. So here is the thing - the train station at London Gatwick is a common station that is used by several train companies, and it is not monopolized by the Gatwick Express, unlike the Heathrow Express at Heathrow. So we ended up buying tickets for Southern Railway, one day in advance, for off-peak travel for the four of us. Cost about 32 pounds for the 4 of us, which was fine. However, the train was jammed packed! Reason was that many earlier trains were cancelled. So we had to squeeze into the train. Thankfully the journey was very smooth and after 30 minutes of standing, we got to Gatwick in very good time. Video footage of some clips onboard the train.

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Some scenes from London Gatwick airport. Checking in for Turkish Airlines was easy enough as there were no lines when we arrived. We got into the restricted area fairly quickly and had some time to spare. Here are some scenes from the check in and restricted area.

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Some more food videos from our time in London. This is from a restaurant in London Chinatown called Young Cheng which serves wonderful Lobster Noodles. Oh, so delicious! We ate a lot of stuff and the bill was under 50 GBP.

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We tried the one Michelin Star Yauatcha restaurant's taster menu called 'Taste of Yauatcha' in London SOHO. The cost was 30 pounds for 2 pax, before taxes. It is a taster menu, so you get one piece each of the following: Har gau, Crystal dumpling wrap with pumpkin, Baked venison puff, Prawn shui mai with chicken, Mushroom spring roll with black truffle, Garden Dumpling, Prawn and beancurd cheung fun and Sticky rice in lotus leaf with chicken and dried shrimp and choice of Chinese tea.

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We spent some days in London, just chilling out and having fun. Some random videos of our time in London before I resume the Turkish flight back to Singapore.

Foyles Bookshop, a very beautiful bookshop in London. Enjoyed browsing.

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OKI Noodle and Sushi bar near Wimbledon Tube station. Had lunch here after visting the Hampton Court Palace.

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This building, which was a public library, looked a bit like the Sandcrawler from Star Wars.

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A visit to Harrods at Knightsbridge, and I spotted this decorated Sari cake. Look at the price tag!

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After the good food at Izumi, we still had space for dessert, so we went to the Windjammer. Here, we got crepes from the live crepe station as well as waffles which was also made fresh. A jolly good time! Plenty to eat on a cruise ship, no doubt about that!

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Day 2 evening was formal night. But we decided to skip formal night. Serious. We didn't bring any formal wear, though I think we could have just attended formal night in smart casual wear (I brought pants and a nice shirt), but since we bought the $100 package, we would have to consume those. Tonight, the plan was to dine at the Izumi speciality restaurant. For the dining package, if you dine at Izumi, you get a $30 credit. The four adults would get $120 credit, and that was enough to get food for the 6 of us! The plan was to get dessert from Windjammer after Izumi. So we had sashimi, noodles, and the hot rock. Kids loved it. Here is the video.

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I am really enjoying your videos. Am on Serenade in four weeks so the info is really useful. Thanks!

Glad you found the videos useful. :):)

When we disembarked from the cruise ship in Copenhagen, we immediately made our way from the cruise port to the airport for a flight from Copenhagen to London. Copenhagen airport was pretty nice, but we almost missed our flight because they put their passport control after all the restaurants and shops in the restricted area. What happened was that after we got past security, we thought we had plenty of time. So we went into a Priority Pass lounge and chilled out till about 25 minutes before flight departure, and then we made our way to the gates, only to be confronted by passport control! And there were only 2 counters opened with a fairly long line. Thankfully the lines cleared quickly and we still made it to the plane, even though boarding was well underway. Phew!

Here are two videos, the first is the Aviator Lounge at the Copenhagen Airport, which is a Priority Pass lounge. We had quite a lot of time to spare so rather than wander around the airport, I decided to just bring the entire family into the lounge to get some rest. Nothing great in terms of food selection (as you can see in the video) but seats were comfortable and the coffee was good. I also did some plane watching.

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Again, thank God that we made the flight. If you fly out from Copenhagen, beware the immigration counters! Here is a video of the British Airways flight from Copenhagen to London Heathrow. Somehow, when we fly between Europeans cities, we end up going with British Airways. They are a bit more expensive than the low cost carriers, but I think we are happy with the product. On this flight, I asked for whiskey and coffee. Never had this combination before, but there is always a first time.

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We enjoyed the peaceful time in the lounge, and when it was time to board, we made our way to the gate. We had to take a bus to the plane bound for Copenhagen which was flight TK1783. The bus ride was nice, could see many planes. When we boarded, we found the missing cushion that I had talked about earlier. Once that was fixed, everything was smooth. Flight was good and we got some food to eat. We arrived in Copenhagen about 10 minutes ahead of schedule.

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We didn't really spent a lot of time in Copenhagen. The objective of going there was to board a cruise ship for a cruise to the Baltic seas. The hotel we stayed in was called Hotel Bethel, a 2-star hotel at River Nyhavn - basic but clean and one of the least expensive options we could find. We stayed one night.

Since I have made the videos of the Hotel and surrounding scenes, let me share them here. First is Hotel Bethel which is a very clean and good 2-star hotel right at River Nyhavn.

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This next video shows you some scenes from Copenhagen, River Nyhavn, as we were walking around.

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Part 2 of scenes from Copenhagen.

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Thanks for all of these videos! I will be sailing Serenade in September and these are just getting me all pumped up (and hungry).

 

What was your favorite experience on the ship during this cruise?

Glad the videos were useful.

Favourite - cabin 1054.

Sounds good.

We arrived in Istanbul slightly ahead of schedule and the next flight was a good 3 hours or more away. We had already decided beforehand, and having read how busy Istanbul Airport would be, that we would park ourselves in a Priority Pass lounge. Both my wife and I are Priority Pass holders (get the card free from our credit card), but we have to pay for lounge admission at US$27 per person. Well, since we had factored in this expense, we went for it, and it was a good decision because the airport was indeed crowded and the lounge provided a nice oasis to rest for a bit, with some food and drink. Here is a video of the experience.

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Now, Day 2 lunch. We decided to lunch in the MDR, since this was a sea day and we had more time. The lunch menu looked the same as what we had previously on many cruises (from as far back as our 2012 Voyager of the Seas cruise), which was ok for us. They had the Tutti Frutti salad bar, which was good. But what was awesome (for the kids) was this live pasta station during MDR lunch that we hadn't seen on any of our previous Royal Caribbean cruises. I don't know if this is the norm on Royal cruises these days, any clue? Anyway, we really enjoyed the pasta. (well, my kids like pasta very much) Here is the video, much of the video is on the live pasta station plus the salad.

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In this video, the Captain was giving his daily update, which was at noon each day. I was on Deck 10, at the elevator area. You can hear the Captain saying that the winds were very strong.

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And I was playing around with the electronic touchscreen on Deck 10 too, checking out the Cruise compass. There was supposed to be a Poolside BBQ on Day 2, which we didn't attend, because we decided to have lunch in the MDR. I'll put up that video after this.

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Kudos again to your videos.

It's as if we are on the cruise now and it will continue until we board in Sept.

Thanks again

Thanks for leaving a nice comment!

Strictly speaking, this wasn't on a cruise ship itself but something I saw in the sea while on the deck of Serenade of the Seas while the ship was docked in Helsinki, Finland.

A hot tub on a military patrol craft. Serious.

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After I came home, did some googling, and found the webpage of Vartiovene 55 - Warship with luxury.

We were on a 7N Baltic Seas cruise out of Copenhagen Denmark, sailing to Stockholm (Sweden), Tallinn (Estonia), St Petersburg (Russia) and Helsinki (Finland). Our sailing was late May 2016. We stayed in a gorgeous Family Oceanview cabin 1054 and had a wonderful time. Follow my cruise critic review - http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=2367291

It was helpful to me since I am flying Virgin Atlantic in September.

Glad you found it useful. :):)

Incredible!

You mean the missing seat cushion? Yeah. :):)

Plenty of good hotels in Singapore (though not cheap), and all those mentioned so far are good.

If you are looking at Royal Plaza on Scotts, Grand Hyatt, here is the what the surrounding area looks like.

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Fairmont Singapore is very popular because it is integrated with Raffles City, which is integrated with the City Hall MRT station.

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The Suntec City/Marina Square area also has many good hotels. These two videos give you a glimpse of those areas.

Pan Pacific Hotel Marina Square Mall walk to Esplande MRT.

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Marina Square Mall, Marina Mandarin Hotel.

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This is a car camera video showing you Raffles City area to Marina Bay Cruise terminal and back to Orchard Road.

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Hope these help.

To be fair, the rest of the flight and also the earlier leg was pretty good. We were on a holiday and headed to Copenhagen. Originally we planned to book SQ (Singapore Airlines) for the 4 of us, but the option of Turkish Airlines came along and we could save almost $2K (SGD) for the 4 of us. So we decided to give Turkish a try. Here are the videos of our experience.

At Singapore Changi Airport, when we checked in, I was informed by the check-in staff that I could use the SATS Premier Lounge (even though I was flying in Economy) because I was Star Alliance Gold status. Well, I recently turned Star Gold and I don't even have my card yet, so I wasn't expecting this. Anyway, it was great, though I could only bring one guest. At the lounge entrance, I asked nicely if I could bring both my kids and the reception staff kindly agreed. My wife stayed outside though, she went shopping. Later on, I found out that SATS Premier Lounges were also Priority Pass lounges, so we could have used the lounge, albeit for a fee.

Here is the video of the lounge, which is used by a good number of airlines. I guess this is called a contract lounge. They had a decent hot food selection, not as good as the SilverKris, but good enough for most. There was the signature laksa, which tasted good. Also they had 3 OSIM massage chairs at one corner. Cool!

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Our flight was TK55 and departed at 2200hrs from Changi Terminal 1. The plane was almost full, with a good number of passengers from Singapore, including some aunties (if you watch the video, you can hear some of their voices during boarding, exclaiming that 2-4-2 is good). What is 2-4-2? That's the seating configuration on the plane, 2-4-2. Flight time was 11 hours and two meals were served. Flight was smooth and we got to Istanbul slightly ahead of schedule.

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Turkish Airlines is a growing international airline that has earned a decent reputation according to the various airline rankings. They fly to most major European cities as well as cities in USA like Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, New York JFK, Newark, San Francisco & Washington DC.

For a recent family trip, we flew from Singapore to Copenhagen (via Istanbul) and then later on from London Gatwick back to Singapore, on Turkish Airlines.

Ever boarded a plane to fly off and be confronted with a metal chair and a missing seat cushion? I admit this has never happened to me until our recent experience on Turkish Airlines. We were flying from Singapore to Istanbul and onward to Copenhagen. This was on the Istanbul to Copenhagen leg. We had to take an airport bus to board the plane. It was a nice and sunny morning. We got on board, walked to our seats, and were confronted with this....

Hmmm, I didn't know we had to fit our own cushion? But that can't be. More likely some maintenance crew did not complete his job! And it certainly didn't help that the dirty cushion left on the metal seat looked like this.

Not a great way to start a flight, I reckon. I first alerted a male cabin crew, who didn't seem too surprised. But he disappeared. Really! Then I alerted a female cabin crew, who said she will help sort this out. True enough, she came back within a few minutes with a new cushion and fitted it. Well done!

Here is a short video clip of the missing seat cushion experience.

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Thankfully, after that cushion episode, everything was smooth. In fact, we did quite enjoy our Economy flight on Turkish Airlines. We flew Singapore to Istanbul, and then Istanbul to Copenhagen. On our return leg, it was London Gatwick to Istanbul, and then Istanbul to Singapore. Along the way we had a separate British Airways one-way flight from Copenhagen to London Heathrow.

This is the return leg of the trip in June 2016.

After the Washington DC to LHR leg on Virgin Atlantic Upper Class, I go to the SilverKris lounge at London Heathrow Terminal 2B for a shower and some light food.

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And here is the flight on SQ305, London to Singapore. Part 1.

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And here is Part 2, where I show you the meals.

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Upon arrival at Singapore Changi Airport Terminal 3 in the early morning, I bought a bottle of Johnny Walker Gold Label whiskey from the DFS store.

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Thanks very much for your comments.

Great review. Love your videos.

Thanks for watching!