Biking

On Tuesday we cycled from Christchurch to Akaroa to visit Sylvia's uncle Tim. Sylv's bike was equipped with slicks, and my town bike was specially pimped for the occasion.

We didn't leave until quite late because Sylv had a phone interview at quite short notice! We took the 22 km Little River Rail Trail - not because it was easy riding (it wasn't - it's quite a rough surface) but because it was off-road.

As usual, our cycle touring had an exploratory dimension. Damn maps.

Yay!

It's an 80 km ride overall. Once you get to Hilltop, it's only 12 kms to go...but in those 12 kms there are some nasty, steep little climbs out of the various bays you go around in Akaroa Harbour. We were pretty tired by the time we got to Tim's cottage.

Tim kindly shouted us to dinner when we got there, just the kind of pampering a couple of tired tourists need. The bath at Tim's place also felt pretty good :-)

Breakfast at Nicky's place

We stayed the night at Nicky's place on the road to the Kaik. She has a beautiful piece of land sloping down to the harbour, with an amazing house and garden.

L-R: Frances, Tim, Sylvia, Nicky

We felt pretty lazy catching the bus back the next day. However, after Little River the NW headwind picked up and we saw a bunch of roadies struggling into it and felt some satisfaction in a decision well made.

We've also done some random mountainbiking since we've been back. Here are a few photos from the newish tracks at Mcleans Forest, part of the Waimakariri River Regional Park.

Sylvia

Looking sexy in lycra?

Kylie

Dubai

Whew - the last of our travel blogs (for a while at least). Right at the end of our trip we had a 3-night stopover in Dubai to stay with Jeff & Greer. Dubai is one of those places we'd heard so much about, so we wanted to confirm / destroy our prejudices. I think the photo below captures the spirit of Dubai: a series of dichotomies. There's immense wealth + poverty, luxious water features + desert, multinational tourists + strict islamic regime.

All-in-all a rather interesting place to explore and ponder upon.

We went on one of these little boats across the river. Cheap and fun touristing - our favourite.

This is the only camel we saw (in case you can't tell, it's stuffed). We didn't have time / money / inclination to head off into the desert on a safari, but went to the Dubai museum instead. The heat was quite oppressive and walking anywhere difficult and rather grimy (due to the white sand that would get in everything).

We had a lot of fun hanging out with Jeff & Greer at their flat, making use of their rooftop gym and pool and playing on their Wii.

We also did the Dubai Mall thing. This is the world's largest indoor ski slope at the Mall of Emirates. We also saw the world's largest indoor-in-a-mall aquarium at the Dubai Mall. Oh, plus the world's tallest building. Do you think they are compensating for something?

Turkey Tour

We did our first ever tour in Turkey. It was with Intrepid Travel (who came recommended) and was one of their "active" tours. We had a great time, and it was interesting to experience a different style of travel. Everything was organised and prepared for us, there was always someone to give us answers if we had questions, and we could just generally switch our brains off for the last part of our European adventure.

Since it was a while ago now, I won't bore you with screeds of text, here are some photos instead.

You get served tea and snacks on the buses. Bus transport was excellent in Turkey. Our overnight bus from Pammukkale to Istanbul even had entertainment systems in the back of the seats like on a plane!

Our tour group. Meals together were one of the fun points, because the two of us were running low on conversation by this point (only kidding)



We visited Gallipoli. There are lots of cemeteries scattered around the battlefields.

The remains of one of the trenches the ANZAC soldiers dug, nearly 100 years on.

Food was a highlight. This picture shows a variety of mezes (starters). It was quite feasible to just have a meal of mezes, and quite a good option if you're a vegie.

The remains of the ancient city of Ephesus. It was a Lycean city first, then a Roman port. Now it's the best-preserved Roman city in this area. Perhaps people would be living here still if the sea hadn't retreated from the harbour. Bummer for them!

Yep, that's a Roman latrine. They were quite social.

The remains of the library.

More food! This will become gozleme, a stuffed pancake. Now I wish I'd had some dinner before writing this blog post.

Rock tombs above the city of Fethiye. The Lyceans carved these out of the rock.

Mmm, pomegranate!

A simple village mosque. No minaret at this one - "we'll get around to it one day".

Lots of cards were played.

Not a bad spot for lunch! The end of our two-day trek.

Ramming speed! We sea kayaked over a sunken town, you could still see remains of walls and foundations. Apparently there was an earthquake, the land subsided by 2 metres, and it was enough to submerge the town. Bummer for them.


MTB.


It was long enough by now.

The travertine terraces of Pammukkale.

Pammukkale was the site of a well-preserved Roman settlement (they did like their hot spas). There is a large necropolis with lots of pre-Roman, Roman and Byzantine tombs. These ones are being slowly overtaken by the travertine deposits.

After Pammukkale, it was the overnight bus (yuk) back to Istanbul and a day with Simon, Julian and Jana. Then onwards to the delights of Dubai!

Istanbul

We're now home in New Zealand, but just a couple of short weeks ago we were in Turkey! It still seems strange to us.

After the cock-ups listed in the previous post, we caught an overnight bus to Istanbul. There are worse places to do an overnight bus trip than Turkey - Turkish buses are actually really good.

We stayed a couple of nights in Istanbul with Simon until our tour started, then another night with him after our tour ended. Simon has lived in Istanbul for a while now and he was a great tour guide. He was also a great host!

You see the Turkish flag a lot here. Good thing that it's probably our favourite flag!

The roof of the Blue Mosque (up inside the domes)

The Blue Mosque. Behind it is the Hagia Sofia, which was the biggest Byzantine church prior to the conquest of Istanbul by the Ottomans. They converted it to a mosque.

Byzantine Christian frescoes inside Hagia Sofia, painstakingly uncovered from beneath plaster.

Us with Simon and Tash, another friend of Simon's who was also staying at his flat.

The Basilica Cistern, an enormous Roman water reservoir constructed beneath the old part of Istanbul. It was only rediscovered relatively recently, when city authorities noticed that people were getting water out of a hole in the street by lowering buckets!

Ladies have to cover up in mosques.

Inside the Spice Bazaar. Sylvia haggled herself a great deal on a blue pashmina (see previous photo)

We were lucky that Julian and Jana just happened to be in Istanbul on the last night we were there. They stayed with Simon as well, so we had a good old catch-up :-)

Bulgaria

Ah Bulgaria - another of these countries that we knew very little about before we arrived but found to be very friendly and wished we could have stayed longer! The challenge of a new alphabet (did you know that the Bulgarians invented Cyrillic?) was fun and by the end of our time we could have a fair guess at what signs said.

We had originally planned to spend three nights at Veliko Tarnovo, a hilltop town in central Bulgaria, and three nights on the Black Sea coast at Sozopol. Unfortunately, due to uncooperative train and bus schedules (the summer season has already ended and frequencies have dropped a bit) we ended up spending one night in Ruse, two in Veliko, one in Burgas and two in nearby Sozopol. A bit more moving about than we might have liked but we did get to spend time in more places!

Ruse is pretty nice for a border town. After another of our late night border crossings we found ourselves once more on the Danube River in the morning.

Then by (mini) bus to Veliko Tarnovo. Will we ever find ourselves on a proper-sized coach again? VT is beautiful and justly deserves its reputation as the nicest hilltop city with a citadel in Bulgaria, at least based on our sample of one hilltop city with a citidel in Bulgaria.

The nationalistic "Four Kings Monument" built by the Communists

The river makes several loops through the city, through a deep gorge. Lots of rock climbing potential - including the "Executioners' Rock" at the citadel, where unfortunate souls were thrown to their deaths!

Burgas was fairly unremarkable so let's skip straight to pictures of Sozopol and our seaside relaxation.

A fairly typical Sozopol old town street showing the traditional "Black Sea" houses

Our plan had been to catch the 1200 bus from Burgas in order to be in Istanbul by 1900. Unfortunately this was to be a day of cock-ups.

#1. Tickets for the 1200 bus were sold out so we had to subject ourselves to another night bus - departure 2200, arrival 0500...yuk
#2. Went to the movie "Inglourious Basterds" - although we were told it was in English, large parts of it turned out to be in French or German with Bulgarian subtitles (actually quite funny)
#3. Decided to take a punt on a random platter for two with ingredients not translated into English. Turned out to be a massive meat platter - with the two of us not normally eating a lot of meat it gave us bursting bellies and the "meat sweats" on the bus!

Everything worked out fine in the end and we're now in Turkey. I guess our next blog will be about Istanbul or perhaps our upcoming "Active Turkey" tour.