Turkey Travel Guides
So Stew and I were joined by our mother’s and my brother, Adam for 3 nights and we explored Istanbul together.
Finally, here are all of the images from our cycling in Turkey. Turkey was one of our favourite countries to date. Very beautiful, very hospitable and cuisine was so good!
Özgür cycled past, pulled out google translate and we told him about our trip. He took us for tea in the cutest cafe/bookshop and we met Merve, Ceren and Can. Merve spoke perfect English. She was studying English Literature for her Masters and reading Shakespeare. I was so impressed.
Mustafa was our warmshowers host in Rize, he was recommended to us by @cycling_east Mustafa has a lovely and very popular cafe in Rize.
The road surface in Turkey was for the most part, exceptional. We had not yet travelled to any country that had some smooth and undamaged roads. It was an absolute treat to ride here.
Please enjoy this blog post about a fantastic warmshowers host and I’ll tell you about the wonderful group we met this evening tomorrow!
We wandered around Katamonu, went out for dinner and met our Warmshowers hosts, Behiç's wonderful friends.
In Turkey yoghurt is consumed in quantities unimaginable! The yoghurt drink, Ayran is sipped with lunch and dinner, but never breakfast. In a restaurant you will see more Ayran than water, coke or alcohol (obviously).
From today we are leaving the north coast of Turkey (for now) and heading inland. Over the next few days we’re anticipating a lot of climbing. With this in mind we’ve been considering a rest day. Partly to rest legs, but mainly because we’re very tired and Stew’s got a cold.
A city of 2 halves, a place where West meets East. We stayed in Istanbul for 6 nights. The longest stop to date. We were joined by our mums and my brother who flew out to meet us.
Tea is a bigger part of Turkish custom than I ever imagined. Usually when I think of tea I think of China or England. In Turkey you will see many people enjoying Çay. In fact you can get Çay pretty much anywhere.
Since travelling and seeing some of the world I’ve been torn over comments like : “tourist trap”, the notion that tourists ruin places and the mentality that it would be a shame for countries to gain a place on the map.
For the last few weeks Stew and I have started setting the alarm nice and early. The average wake up call is 05:30am. Occasionally we wake at 04:00am, if we’re wanting to put some serious miles in.
When we set off on our 24,000 mile bike ride Turkey felt like it was so far away and yet on 24th June we arrived!