And finally, proud greetings from Istanbul, (not constantinople), Turkey.
After four months of cycling, we eventually made it.
Seven days from sofia, through possibly the most samey terrain we've encountered, and the hotest weather we've had. We took three days to reach the turkish border, stopping at Plovdiv and its roman remains en route. Here a very helpful bulgarian replace some spokes on my bike, and refused payment.
Onto the border, where we were due to pay the fine we recieved for riding on the motorway. We went through three successive passport checks exciting Bulgaria, and none of them mentioned the fine, which is a stamp on our entry mark in our passports. We were thinking, we've got away with this, when the fourth and final passport control studies our passports for ages, and then asks us about the stamp from the traffic police. I play dumb, and Paul mimes a kind of motorcycle revving action on his bike handlebars. The border guard looks a little unsure for a while, and we're thinking we're going to have to pay the fine, when the guard, and his two collegues burst of laughing, really laughing hard and loud. They figured that we had a fine for speeding, on push bikes, and because this was so ridiculous, they ushered us through without us paying. The ironic thing is, that with 20 leva saved to pay the fine, the turkish exchange shops wouldn't change leva, so we lost the money anyway.
On entering turkey, we found that the border guards were on a break, so the whole place was full of people just hanging around waiting to go through. We bought our 10ukp visa, and eventually made it on to the long straight dusty highways of Turkey.
The terrain was long rolling hills, fast downhills and hot and slow uphills, but the arid landscape was looking pretty stunning. The next three days were like this.
About 35kms out from Istanbul centre, we pulled off the highway to find a hotel before entering the city proper the next day. After finding no hotel, we were stopped in the street by a turkish girl who was mad to speak english to us. She found us a hotel, and we went to a few cafes with her and her sister, and then to their apartment where we met their mother. This suburb, Acilar, was the only part of Istanbul to suffer from the earthquake, and the mother was terrified of being in the apartment block. The night before we arrived there had been a quack of magnitude 4.7 - the building had a large crack by the entrance, and a lot of people were living in tents in parks around the city. Apparantly four buildings had collapsed in the suburb, killing 400 people, during the big quake. The quake we had just missed lasted 20 seconds, and their mother spent the whole time in the apartment while we were there watching the chandelier for any sign of swaying, indicating a new earthquake. It was a little bit of a relief to leave the apartment, even for us who hadn't experienced any earthquake.
The next day we rode 35kms into the centre of Istanbul, where we are taking it very easy, and really not doing much apart from try to figure the best way out of here. We hoped for a boat to Athens from istanbul, but life isn't so easy, so it looks like we'll take the train. We are allowed to now, as the first leg of the journey has been successfully completed with not trains, busses or cars, just our legs!
Istanbul looks rather like the cities in the new star wars film (or should that be the other way around), and the city resounds with the Muslim calls to pray from the multitude of minarets around the city. I suppose we should take a turkish bath, and we are planning a ferry ride up the Bosphorous, because atleast we should touch Asia.