Tag Archives: Bursa

Day 316 – Bridge between two continents

Rain. That thing. The slight annoyance that you forget about after camping in sunshine for a week. Well, this morning, it was raining. It slowed down our daily morning routine and it dampened our mood. Packing a wet tent is also not fun. Enough whining, we got on the road and today, we’d make it to Istanbul. 🙂

stupid toll system, still not working!

stupid toll system, still not working!

The GPS routed us on a giant 6 lane motorway. Flo, scrolling ahead, said there seems to be a ferry which will shorten the trip considerably. However, the next signs told us that Istanbul is only 90km away and that there will be a bridge. That sounds great! Yeah, nah. As with the museum in Troy, people got ahead of themselves. The motorway led right to the sea…but the bridge isn’t finished yet. From this point, Istanbul was still 120km away and we had to circumnavigate all of the Sea of Marmara. To make things worse the toll road ended with a secured gate this time and instead of waving your paywave card, they wanted cash from you. We still have about 30 Turkish lira on the card which we will probably never use up so paying cash now felt like we had to pay twice. Flo was not amused, to say the least.

Time to move on. Rocinate still looks like a demo bike ;)

Time to move on. Rocinate still looks like a demo bike 😉

Didn’t matter, we were still on track for Istanbul. Our first stop was the Touratech Türkiye shop, just for a visit. As with almost all Touratech shops we have been in, it was lovely. The staff is good for a chat, we got free tea and coffee and we looked at what’s new. We didn’t need anything but I didn’t say no to the visor cleaners we were offered…insect goo is one of the constants of our trip.

Istanbul is big. The GPS calculated another 28km from the shop to our hotel. And there is a lot of traffic, especially because we wanted to use one of the two bridges over the Bosporus. Driving from the Asian continent over a bridge onto the European continent was our idea of ending the trip. Of course, we will have a look around the city for a couple of days but afterwards, it’s pretty much straight to Frankfurt. Europe will have to wait for another journey. With those thoughts in mind, the crossing was actually quite emotional. It took us almost 11 months to get here.

The last meters in Asia!

The last meters in Asia!

Our one room apartment, once we found it, turned out to be exactly what we’d hoped for. Hotels in Istanbul seem very cheap at the moment and the online offers are very good. We got our room for three nights for 62€ including breakfast. And it’s in the center of the city.

But riding through rain and traffic, skipping lunch and being emotional about this last part of our journey had left us exhausted. We had an early dinner and otherwise enjoyed the comforts of our room.

Day 315 – Troy untouched

Peeking into the archaeological site you see a...horse

Peeking into the archaeological site you see a…horse

Well … we thought to mix it up a bit and visit the local museum instead of another set of ruins. This time especially, since there is really not much left to see of the ancient cities of Troy (yes, there were actually 7 cities on top of each other built over the ages). The museum got early praise in the guide book and was due to open in mid 2015. But it turns out this is one more thing Turks have in common with Germans: It was still not done yet.

Not too sad, we hit the road and got on our way to the final city to be explored on our trip: Istanbul. Now the logical thing would be to take the ferry from Çanakkale to Gallipoli, have a look around and then go to Istanbul. That way, going home would be a single long line on motorways. But alas, we can not. Because Gallipoli is in Europe, and we had had this idea of riding from Asia to Europe over the Bosporus pretty much since the start of our trip. We are probably adding another 300km to our trip that way, but who is counting?

So close! But you still have to take a ferry across, so we're taking the long way around

So close! But you still have to take a ferry across, so we’re taking the long way around

So we flew along the coast, ready to do a round trip along the entire coastline of the Sea of Marmara. Without taking a ferry, Istanbul was a little bit outside what we would comfortably ride in a day. Plus, we wanted to pay a short visit to Touratech Türkiye. So, in preparation, we booked a (surprisingly cheap) hotel room in the Sultanahmet area of Istanbul and checked for good camp spots along the way.

The spot we found turned out to be one of these unbelievable jackpots we hit from time to time. It was almost brand new, dead cheap and the camp warden was the kindest fellow we had met in a long time. He spoke not a word of English or German, but helped us carry our gear and invited us for çay. Ten minutes after I said I would have to go off now to cook food, he served us with an amazing platter of fresh bread, soup, yogurt and grilled chicken breast, free of charge. Such a sweet guy.

There was another reason this day would stay in our minds for a long time. When I checked my emails, I found an invitation there for a job interview! The work in KaÅŸ had paid off already. Minor detail about this, though: The invitation is for the 23rd … ten days from today, in Frankfurt. But then, this is only 3000km away now, is it not?