Day 84 - Saray to Kabakça

 58.2 km - Total so far 4,386.60 km - Route pedalled.      Relive Video (with pictures)

Video of the day: Europe Day 84                         92 Left to pedal

We are safe and secure in Kabakça, Turkey.

Not much of a warm up this morning as within a kilometre of leaving the hotel we went up hill. That was pretty much the story the entire day. A lot more climbing than we had done to date except maybe the ride to Tuttlingen on Day 25. 

We had our now required morning chai break and for the first time in a while, we had to pay for it. We snacked on our favourite Dutch cookies made in Istanbul. 

The breakfast of champions in Hélène's left hand.

Lunch was a bit of a let down. We had hoped to get something from the local hole in the wall restaurant but there wasn’t one. Hélène dashed to the BOK grocery store and came back with 2 yogurts and 2 chocolate bars. 

Bringing in the yogurt cleared out the place

A fellow Dutch cyclist saw our bright orange pannier covers from a long distance and decided to catch up to us. It says a lot about how visible we are with those covers. It also says how slow we are with all the stuff we are carrying. We will let you know his name as soon as he emails us since for the life of me I cannot remember his first name. He rode with us for a while and decided that we were too slow for him and just took off. It was very impressive to see him pull away effortlessly as a recently retired 66 year old.

We got tooted at a lot today mostly by big tractor trailers hauling gravel to who knows where. 

We got to Kabakça at about 5 pm and completely famished. We stopped pretty close in the middle of the town busy area looking for a restaurant. A very astute gentleman figured out what we were doing, he kissed his finger tips and pointed in the direction of the restaurant. We followed his tip and had a cheap and cheerful supper. Turns out the owner has a cousin living in Toronto and plays hockey.  

We stopped in a small store and asked for beer. The owner, a nice lady, indicated she could not sell beer because of the building located next door. Same issue as we had in Edirne. She indicated the “market” is where you buy beer. I have carried an emergency “beer can” since Belgrade and I thought I might have to crack it open tonight.

The building next door to the little store

On the way to our lodging, I spotted empty beer cases outside the BOK market. The emergency beer would survive another day and get closer to Istanbul.

We are spending the night in a renovated outbuilding near the old train station. We discovered that the owner of the place had only one key to get in and that the key was inside the building sitting on the small table. For the last 83 days, the only way we got to lock a door was with the key making nearly impossible to lock yourself out. Here as soon as you close the door it is locked from the outside. It was hilarious to see a guy show up with tools to let us in. We resolved the problem ourselves by lifting the screen and reaching in to the key on the table.

Tomorrow we have another “bicycle climb fest” just like today. A great way to cleanse the body!