West meets East

The Turkish border is about 50km East of where we were staying at Alexandroupolis in Greece. Paul had been through this border in the other direction when he did the Doha-London trip in 2009. He was leaving Turkey then, whereas now we were entering. When he entered Turkey it was at one of the Syrian border crossings and the conversation he had with the Turkish customs official at the time had been short: ' Hello'. 'Bakshish'. And it cost about 80€. But he was wearing a silly helmet, silly clothes and with a dodgy Qatari number plate that just asked for trouble.

  

 

No man's land between Greece and Turkey is a real border crossing. Quite a long stretch with men with guns at either end and barbed wire fences either side.                         

This time there were no real issues paperwork wise. A bit burocratic as we seemed to have to show the paperwork at least four times. It was a little disconcerting to the both of us, for different reasons, that the last customs official said, ' I love you Paul'. We took that as a cue to leave. Quickly.

                          

                          

                         

The run in to Istanbul is pretty boring, made worse by it being into a headwind. It's a long way of nothing really. The only upside was being pulled over by the Police, probably for speeding but they were just happy looking at the bike and waved us on.  However fun started about 34km out when we hit a traffic jam that continued all the way to the hotel, which is just next to the sea below the Blue Mosque.

                         
 

                        

                                        
 

We even tried to be clever by taking the airport road and following the coast rather than going through the centre of town. Overall it cost us an hour and a quarter and we managed to weave, or was it more wobble, through the traffic.  When we were not blocked by water sellers and others selling their wares. We took short cuts that ended up in diversions that we tried to avoid by taking cobbled side streets that became blocked by delivery vehicles in the old town and then dipped down under a very limited headroom passage below a railway line before, having had enough by then, doing a U turn on a dual carriageway between a gap in the Aramco.
 

Traffic is quite something else here.