Into Asia.

Bush camp-Bulgaria.

Spent a cold night bush camping in Bulgaria (even had ice on the tent in the morning) before heading into Turkey. The boarder crossing only took 3 hours and after a long drive day we arrived into Istanbul-what a city! Amazing and definately the highlight of the trip so far. We were based in the heart of the old town right next to the Blue Mosque and Ayia Sophia for 3 nights. Myself and Lyndsey decided to upgrade from the hostel and ended up in a wonderful apartment just across the road-bliss! It is great to get these breaks from camping from time to time, a chance to do laundry and not to have to pull on jeans and boots in the middle of the night to trip across wet grass to go pee!

View from my tent!

Istanbul was just fantastic, managed to see the main sights:- Blue Mosque, Ayia Sophia, Topkapi Palace and totally overspent in the Grand Bazaar. I can now haggle with the best of them and managed to negogiate 'best price' on a number of items. For more detailed Bazaar banter please refer to 'Back in Six' (totally jealous of Steve's blog!). Also managed to have some great food, lots of apple tea, play some back gammon and a bit of the hubble bubble pipe!

Topkapi Palace

Inside the Gande Bazaar

Ayia Sophia

From Istanbul we travelled along the Black Sea coast, stopping for two nights on the way at a lovely campsite with sea views from the door of my tent! So now we have 4 nights in Goreme in the region of Cappadocia, famous for it's caves, lunar landscapes, fairy chimneys (?) and hot air ballooning. It's a brilliant spot, we did a tour of the area which included climbing through some severely claustaphobia inducing tunnels of the 'Hidden city' (I now know I don't like enclosed spaces!), spent the evening at a 'Turkish night' complete with the Whirling Dervishes (strange) and hot air ballooning (spectacular).

Goreme
Fairy Chimneys
Hot air balloning at sunrise.

From here we will continue to travel through Turkey on our way to Georgia. So until next time please enjoy the pictures, there are more on facebook too.