Turkish Airlines

We recently joined the exclusive club of people who had an enjoyable meal aboard an airplane. Airplane food is normally just one notch above hospital food - the extremely bland offering of a spineless and tasteless cross-breeding between a pizza and a sandwich that Air France hands out on their Paris-Tunis flights and that I ate on an almost weekly basis last year comes to mind. But the food on board of Turkish airlines flights is amazing. The air company seems conscious of this. After boarding, passengers are greeted by a cook - or at leas someone in a chef's uniform - and before take off, menus are handed out.

So, this Monday's lunch is enjoyed seven miles high. For Rihanna Gaga and myself, we pick the chicken menu, while my girlfriend opts for the vegetarian variety. The chicken comes with ries, a chickpea sauce, a tasty bread roll, grilled zucchini, a kind of tzatziki and dessert of chocolate mousse that surprises by tasting very good - unlike most chocolate mousses. Rihanna Gaga quickly finishes the considerably large bits of chickens, which I break into little bits and feed to her. I then spoonfeed the rice to her, which she also really enjoys, but after that she's pretty much done and I eat my own meal.

We had a great time in Istanbul. The two hour time difference with Tunis actually worked in our favour: it meant Rihanna Gaga could stay up until nine or ten o'clock - which for us was seven or eight o'clock, her usual bedtime - after which she would sleep until around eight local time - six o'clock our time. In the evening, we would read in the hotel lobby before joining her to bed early, so that we even got a good rest during this short holiday.

Our time in Istanbul was mostly spend visiting friends and shopping - things that weren't particularly interesting for a two and a half year old, but Rihanna Gaga still seemed to enjoy herself. First of all, there was a well-kept neighbourhood playground right in front of our hotel: something unheard of in Tunisia, where there's only paid playgrounds with carrousels, intricate climbing structures and the like, often accompanied by loud music, or badly maintained public playgrounds. Then, she got to enter a mosque for the first time in her life, the Blue Mosque in Sultanahmet, the historical centre of Istanbul. She hugely enjoyed the experience, rolling around on the tapestry, running around in the huge prayer hall (we had to stop her running off into the part reserved for people actually praying) and laughing and shouting all the while. Mosques tend to be far less solemn affairs then churches, so this behaviour wasn't really a problem - in fact, many Turks who saw her seemed to enjoy her cheerfulness. Like in Tunis, Rihanna tended to attract a lot of attention with her blonde curls and blue eyes in Istanbul, but while in Tunis this attention tended to be quite pushy - she regularly is 'attacked' by people who dive into her stroller to kiss her without asking us (or her, for that matter) if that's okay. And in fact, it most of the times is not okay: Rihanna Gaga doesn't enjoy that kind of attention at all and will often scream or try to hide herself, which is usually completely ignored. In Turkey, however, people immediately back off when she makes it clear she doesn't enjoy the attention - and they're not so pushy in the first place, mostly waving at her from a distance or quietly attempting to join her in her play, which she seemed to actually enjoy.

Tunisia is a great place to live, but is a bit of an island, with two neighbours (Libya, where there a civil war going on and Algeria, where it's impossible to travel to) that are not accessible for us. Tunis is a big city but offers only a limited scope of cultural life and entertainment and has little historical feel to it. Compared to this, our weekend to Istanbul was a bit of a breath of fresh air and even though there wasn't much in it for Rihanna Gaga, she still very much seemed to enjoy all the time spend with the three of us. And though she was, at times, a bit overwhelmed, she also seemed to genuinely enjoy many of the new impressions: taking a boat to one of the princess islands, where a friend of mine lived; visiting a mosque and watching the large fountain in front of the Aya Sofya; having a Turkish breakfast at the eatery in front of our hotel and conversing with the cats hanging around that place.

And it has to be said: even the flights were enjoyable. Turkish Airlines is simply a very, very good airlines. The service is impeccable and from the moment you step aboard, you feel like no effort is spared to make one feel welcome. This really made for a pleasant change compared to Air France, Lufthansa, Alitalia, Tunisair and KLM, the companies I usually deal with because they're the ones  operating flights between Tunisia and Amsterdam. Lufthansa and KLM offer okay service (the others, especially Alitalia and Tunisair certainly don't), but it is nothing compared to how Turkish Airlines treats its customers. There was the good food, plenty of in-flight entertainment (which none of the other airlines offer on such short flights). To top all of it off, there were little extras for Rihanna Gaga as well: she got a teddy bear in pilot uniform on each of the flights, as well as a book with colour plates, games, pictures and stories to keep her busy - but to which she paid little attention, mesmerized as she was by the cartoons on the screen in front of her. After dinner, however, she declares that she's tired and wants to sleep - her way of saying she wants her soother and Kom, her favourite toy animal, a pink sheep with a music box inside - and quickly dozes off, only to wake up just before touch down.

After the flight, we manage to quickly pass customs, pick up our luggage and within half an hour after touchdown we are home.