28 April — Greece – Turkey, 195 miles
So – the last few posts have all been titled rather boringly… “nearly out of Europe”, “almost leaving Europe”, “So so close to being out of Europe”, etc, etc. Similar to headlines in the UK for the last year or so, and presumably the next year or so.
That’s as the first 9 days of this trip have been towards one goal… “Get Out of Europe”… and I think that’s finally ticked off. Hopefully, from here on in – the schedule is a little more relaxed (relatively), and seeing more interesting things – rather than just clocking off hundreds of miles on motorways.
Got up early – strap all the spare tyres to the bikes (for some customs/import reason – the van isn’t allowed to take them over the border… but the bikes are, and we loaded them back into the van immediately over the border (within sight of the border/customs))
~35 miles of standard Greek highway, to get to Turkish Border.
Sat around and waited, for a couple of hours… while the paperwork was processed rather slowly
~140 miles of boring Turkish motorway… better driving than Albania, but I did see one vehicle driving down the motorway in the wrong direction
~20 miles of just riding through Istanbul
Two days “off” now… .three nights in the same hotel… a lot of “stuff” to catch up on.
Tomorrow, give the bike an inspection, try to re-pack the “seldom-used-stuff” pannier a little better.
At some point – try to sort out this bloody laptop… buying a brand new bit of kit just before travelling – not smart
And I guess catch up on a few other things – accounting/tax-stuff, finally paying for the “extras” for this trip, paying any other bills, maybe a facebook update, and maybe even extract a few decent video clips from GoPro footage thus far.
Doubtful, though – as primarily – I’m going to go see some stuff.
