Mark63

It took from 8:15pm on Saturday local time in Istanbul to 2:30am on Monday local time in Melbourne for us to get home. A long and tiring trip, but the flight itself was uneventful. What was, for so long, something we were looking forward to, is now memories that will last our lifetimes. So by the numbers, • We rode in 14 countries, • and dealt with 6 different currencies, • We travelled over 4,500kms in distance, • We climbed just on 20,000m in vertical height • We stayed in 67 different hotels/apartments and • We created countless memories. It's quite a thing to sit back now and reflect on what we have just completed. There was never a thought before hand of us not completing the trip, but while travelling it became obvious that any ... read more

Let's start with where I left off yesterday. On the way to the airport in Cappadocia to return back to Istanbul on an 8:25pm flight landing in Istanbul at 9:55pm. Our hope was to be out of the airport by 10:30pm and back at the hotel by 11:30pm. Well, that was a good plan - until it wasn't. We checked in and all was good, then shortly after that we noticed our flight had been delayed to 9:30pm, that meant not getting back until after midnight some time. We had meant an Australian Father/Daughter couple on our tour (Keith and Georgia) and they were travelling on the same flight back to Istanbul. We sat and chatted and then noticed that the flight had been delayed again, until 10:30pm. Argh, what a long day this was becoming, ... read more

We had to be up at 3:00am to be ready for a 3:30am pickup. Tom got up to say good bye and we wished each other well as we now go our separate ways. The cab ride to the airport with no traffic took 40 minutes, I guess that's our base line to work from when we leave on Saturday. The airport is HUGE but well signed, so we made our way to the right spot without any issues, got our flight and slept most of the way. There was then about an hours drive to Goreme where the tour started from and we slept most of the way there too. Our tour today of North Cappadocia only had 6 people on it which was a good sized group. Our first stop was to Uchisar Castle ... read more

As I have mentioned, we still haven't decided how to get our bikes to the airport. Our options are someone comes and collects our bikes, takes them away and packs them, and then returns on the day of departure and transfers us to the airport in time for our flight. A great option but two considerations are that we won't actually see our baggage being packed, and Jeff has some concerns about someone else packing his bike without him being there. The second option we have is to find bike boxes ourselves and pack the bikes up here at the apartment and then find an airport transfer independently. This is made difficult by the fact it's not that easy to find bike boxes in Istanbul and we would be spending time packing instead of exploring the ... read more

Now that the riding is over we can take it easy and rest up, right? Well, that's not how it panned out today. We left the apartment shortly after 8:30am with a list of 6 things to see. 1. The Blue Mosque 2. Topkapi Palace 3. Basilica Cistern 4. Hagia Sofya Mosque 5. Grand Bazaar 6. Galata Tower Although we had metro cards we plotted a course in google maps that took us to each of these points and started walking. We first reached the Sultanahmet Area which provided many sights including a couple of obelisks brought from Egypt. We then stood in the line for the Blue Mosque which moved quite quickly. The Blue Mosque is very impressive, most of the mosques are, but this one especially so, not only because of it's size but ... read more