Cyprus to England Part 4

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FRIDAY 8 OCTOBER

Alarm set for 0700 hrs

Up to breakfast, the miserable lad was on. çay, cheese, olives, bread and jam.

Took our stuff out to the car. Then paid our bill. The evening meal had been included in the rate along with breakfast, so I only had a further 6YTL to pay for the 2 diet cokes.

Car mileage 30059 (-29392) 667 miles so far

The hotel sign said 8 October 0818 hrs and 6°C, as we departed, with Pat driving.

As we drove along the D770 there were communities along the roadside in the distance. Clumps of houses, but they did not appear to have any gardens or even apparent boundary defining territory around the property. Also, no vegetable plots, which we would have expected, maintaining self sufficiency in such a rural area.

The temperature on the car went down to 3°C and the car beeped an ice warning at us.

We stopped at a motorway service station to change drivers and had a çay in a smart little cafe but still only 2 YTL.

There was a market in the main covered part of the service station with all sorts of dry goods in sacks including nuts. This is were we worked out what the various things were on the road earlier.

Temperature now 12°C getting warmer. It was raining and we changed drivers at a lay by. Further along was a petrol station and we filled up 109.61 YTL, Pat had a comfort break and we headed off in heavy rain, time 1219 hours.

In heavy traffic we went through a toll booth in the rain and our KGS ticket didn’t work, the red light showed, no barrier so we drove through and the alarms went off, we just drove on. We may be wanted criminals now.

We were heading for Edirne near the border with Bulgaria and Greece. We stopped at 1502 hours at a motorway service station and had a snack, a Hamburger, Cheese & onion pancake 2 çay, a Pepsi and small water YTL 13.

I then drove the last leg of that day.

We drove along nearly empty three lane motorway until Edirne.

We used our KGS toll card and it let us through this time.

We came off at the first exit for the town, saw an hotel which was a possible option, but kept driving.

We purchased more petrol 100 YTL, so we had a full tank again.

At this point our mobiles started up again, so we must be near to a different country, think it was actually a Greek carrier. The Cypriot mobiles don’t work in Turkey.

We drove through the town and saw a couple more hotels right in the centre of town that didn’t look up to much, so went retraced our steps to the first place we saw; the Hotel Simsek (pronounced shimshek)

3* Hotel, smart looking place, lots of staff at reception.

Asked if we were Russian, German or English, by one lad.

Told him we were English and he then helped us through the registration process with the receptionist.

The price was €75, 140 YTL, for Bed & Breakfast, I paid by card as we were running out of all the Turkish Lira we had got out of cash machines in TRNC to pay the penalty on the car.

We were given room 301, popped back to the car to get our hotel bag and went up with the guy to the room.

In the lift I ended up pressing the button for floor 3 and managed pushing it through the panel. I of course apologised, but he didn’t bat an eyelid. We weren’t able to get the lift to our floor again during our stay because of that!

The room was OK and we overlooked a massive university campus.

Decided a quick livener was in order and went down to the bar.

A Efes beer and coke light. Got talking to the same guy again now working behind the bar and another lady member of staff appeared with even better English, she had lived for about 5 years in Cardiff.

We had discussions about our journey and so on. The lady advised that when the Turks crossed through Bulgaria, they didn’t stop as they thought they were a bunch of thieves.

We were introduced to the owner of the hotel, who happened to be in, he spoke no English, but through our translator said he had been to Manchester.

We went up and showered and changed for Dinner, down again about 1900 hours.

We had the following -
Seasonal salad
A local North Turkish soup with red paprika
Manti - A Turkish dish of ravioli and yoghurt (very spicy though)
Mixed Grill

The same lad took our order and served us. We chatted for a while after the meal. He had been an au pair in London about 10 years ago.

We paid for the meal 49 YTL.

And were back up to the room by 2020 hours.

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