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Istanbul!
  • Mark Holbrook
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  • Mark Holbrook

Istanbul!

Un’avventura a tempo indeterminato di Mark Leggi altro
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    🇬🇷 Komotini Municipality, Greece
    Mark HolbrookIstanbul!Viaggiatore

    Ipsala

    Ieri, Turchia ⋅ ☀️ 20 °C

    So every gantry over the toll roads in Turkey warns foreign drivers that they cannot leave the country until all tolls are paid. Worried therefore that my toll pre paid card may have run out I make another unscheduled detour to a PTT...the Turkish post office. Once more I arrive at 12.31 to find them closed.....I wait....then I wait some more...when they open again a nice lady says she in fact cannot check my card and has no idea how much the tolls would be to the border...she does however put TL 400 on my card. I carry on and meet 5 km queue of trucks at the border....I ride down the middle...at the border I push my bike through because it is overheating...I get shouted at because I am foreign and not paid my tolls...I hand over my toll card...it is turned upside down and back to front and then I am sent to the cash office.....They ask for TL 200...I give them my toll card....they ask for TL200...I give up...TL200 is the largest denomination bank note on this country and it will just buy a cup of coffee. Having cleared Turkey O then head into a militarized no mans' land...Tanks, razor wire and temporary bridges and then I get to Greece and another 5 km queue of lorries....Here two Greeks take great interest in my brakesLeggi altro

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  • Mark HolbrookIstanbul!Viaggiatore

    Bizarre!

    13 maggio, Turchia ⋅ ☀️ 16 °C

    So a mad taxi ride from the hotel delivers me to the old town where I find the Blue Mosque beautifully restored but not very, well, Blue...Hagia Sophia covered in scaffolding outside and with four massive steel towers inside and no access to the ground floor anyway and actual visiting replaced by a multi media experience so loud it makes your ears bleed. At least the bazaar presented a less bizarre experience by just being full of fakes and hustlers.....No, I have not enjoyed Istanbul.Leggi altro

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  • Mark HolbrookIstanbul!Viaggiatore

    Shock

    12 maggio, Turchia ⋅ ☀️ 21 °C

    So this has been an extraordinary day. It started with what was meant to be a 90 minute drive from the Asian to the European side which turned on to over 4 hours and absolutely the ride from hell (no bats though) It started with a bus crashing into the side of a van just outside the hotel as I was leaving....well at least that closed the road so I could do the U turn I needed without any problems then crash after crash after crash. Stationary traffic and everyone expecting me to filter like all the other bikes but I see nothing and I mean nothing as dangerous as weaving between moving lines of traffic...all it needs is one vehicle to pick that moment to veer a little and it is all over. Then ambulances and police roaring along the hard shoulder and taxis trying to squeeze you out of the lane. Well I arrived...I had picked the hotel because it has an underground garage and is close to the metro....the station is just over the road....but the road is a multi level 6 way...I tried for half an hour to find a pedestrian way across and then gave up. Tomorrow I will get a taxi. So now I need a beer....the hotel is dry, the two hotels next door are both dry, the street restaurant are not just dry they also do not have zero sugar coke... everything her seems fuelled by sugar. I do end up with food the place being chosen as the only one that does have diet coke. I thought Turkey was secular....well it seems not here.Leggi altro

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  • Mark HolbrookIstanbul!Viaggiatore

    Izmit

    12 maggio, Turchia ⋅ ⛅ 21 °C

    I am in a city called Izmit and what you see in this rather dull photo is the muddy shore of the sea of Marmaris....Now the most interesting thing...Marmaris is named for the marble which comes from an island in the sea and marble in Spanish is marmol....Now hasn't that made your morning? When I arrived such frivolity was not forefront in my mind at all...JF had tried to kill me all day by tailgating so close I was almost being nudged and then overtaking and cutting in close enough to side swipe me....and then there are the constant traffic check points where you get all your papers out and they turn them upside down and stare at you...very polite but no smiles....so I arrive and they ask for my passport....NO PASSPORT....NO ID CARD....now I didn't handle myself very well, I had had a premonition of dread before I started this trip, it is a long way, I haven't been feeling great and had done precious little prep....I thought maybe the tooth thing had excised that curse but all of a sudden I was faced with it...NO DOCS!....now I expect to have a pretty good dollop of shite spooned on me on my way out of Turkey to Schengen but with no documents?.....So I thought...Last Hotel? They take your passport on check in, but I would never have given them the full folder....then I thought police checkpoints and police wandering away rotating my docs upside down and back to front...but they must have given it back...and then I thought...Given back and then tucked in my tank bag and waved on with a broken zip?......Oh Lord.....heart doing the 'Let's break the 200 bpm thing' I go back to the bike and search all the impossible places and then I look with my drone license and there it is.....And Breathe..(and drink!)Leggi altro

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  • Mark HolbrookIstanbul!Viaggiatore

    Yazilikkaya

    11 maggio, Turchia ⋅ ☁️ 13 °C

    A Hittite ceremonial site...two rock chambers with narrow paved entrances and open to the sky. I saw the location in Google maps close to where I was staying and went there first thing. A great privilege to have this atmospheric place to myself. Fantastically preserved carvings.Leggi altro

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  • Mark HolbrookIstanbul!Viaggiatore

    Hattusa

    10 maggio, Turchia ⋅ ☀️ 19 °C

    The capital of the Hittites. 1600 BC housing 50,000 people within a defensive wall. The Hittites were so strong that they challenged Egypt concluding the world's first peace treaty with Ramases ii which is now on the United Nations' building in New York. At the centre of the city is a temple with a green jade block that has been there for over 3000 years.Leggi altro

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  • Mark HolbrookIstanbul!Viaggiatore

    For whom the bell....

    7 maggio, Turchia ⋅ ☀️ 20 °C

    I have managed the tolls all the way here though I admit to some uncertainty about which gate to go through whilst a 150 tonne truck bears down at me with intention to kill. Here in Turkey though I had no idea at all...red gates, blue gates, green gates and not a soul or a machine to be seen to take your money. So the nice people at the winery explained you have to have a HGS account which you can set up at any Shell station unless you are a foreigner when you can't.... You have to do it at a PTT station ( turns out to be the post office) but not any PTT only big regional ones. So I go to a Big Regional One and it is closed....I gather with all the others needing the Big Regional PTT and wait ..Leggi altro

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  • Mark HolbrookIstanbul!Viaggiatore

    Ephesus

    7 maggio, Turchia ⋅ ☀️ 12 °C

    Lived in for 8000 years and John lived here (Letter to the Ephesians?) What I didn't know is that Mary is meant to have died here after she was passed to John's care at the crucifixion. The council of Ephesus was held here in 360 AD. Fabulous place although a tsunami of Japanese were following me around.Leggi altro

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  • Mark HolbrookIstanbul!Viaggiatore

    Go Away!

    6 maggio, Turchia ⋅ ☀️ 21 °C

    Well ...no pictures of Cesme because the arrival there was not a nice experience. So there were four vehicles on the ferry...3 bikes including me and a very nice South Korean bloke driving a car he bought in England and had driven it here. We go through passport control...all sort of ok...and our bikes are now in a compound outside the building. Then we go to customs...the Korean goes first ...they look at his documents (why do they always turn them upside down...Is it some sort of ritual?) then they get cross. They tell him that because he does not have UK residency he cannot come in to Turkey with an English car. Now they are wrong...way, way wrong almost every lorry driver would break that rule but I shut up. The Korean is convinced the problem is his green card and he is still on the phone to his insurance company as they escort him back to the ferry. Then it is my turn. I hand over my UK passport, my green card and my Spanish metriculation....they turn it upside down.....then they look at the back ...then they look at me....I give them the ficha technica since it is another piece of paper.....then I give them my two international driving licenses....they turn them upside down...then I say 'Oh you want my residency card!' much relief all round....they had never heard of Portugal or seems. So through the first bit of customs now I have to go out into the street...walk to the other end of the port and come back in again through security to get my bike and have it x rayed in case I am smuggling a Syrian in my panniers. At security they say I have no stamp for a motorcycle and cannot come back into the port. I go back to customs walking past all the security and try to explain. They take my passport.....turn it upside down....and then shout at each other, a lot. I come out with six stamps and get out of Cesme as fast as I can.

    I stop at a winery and celebrate having just scraped into Turkey with a wine tasting.    Leggi altro

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  • Mark HolbrookIstanbul!Viaggiatore

    Delphi

    3 maggio, Grecia ⋅ 🌙 7 °C

    Well...quite something. The location is just magic. I pulled the same trick as at Cordoba and wandered in with the cleaners so that I had the place to myself.The bronze statue is apparently the first and only one found from antiquity....Found in 1860 and preserved due to a mudslide following an earthquake. Since then three have been found under the sea. Usually they were looted and melted down.Leggi altro

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  • Mark HolbrookIstanbul!Viaggiatore

    A bit bloody spartan

    3 maggio, Grecia ⋅ ⛅ 11 °C

    Well today has not been nice. Over breakfast I looked at the forecast......SNOW....well that can't be right I thought....I know I am high up but it is Greece and it is May. So with he bike saying 5C off I go and wow it is cold. Then it started raining so I stop and change into my supposedly (amazon) light waterproof gear...well my inside dry state lasted for about 6 minutes leaving me convinced that Rukka's E1000 a jacket is money well spent....then it snowed. This is Leonidas at ThermopylaeLeggi altro

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  • Mark HolbrookIstanbul!Viaggiatore

    Ancona

    1 maggio, Italia ⋅ ☀️ 16 °C

    So the slow route meant I arrived having not stopped for 6 hours and instead of being early the boat was boarding. I found the ticket office easily enough and told the nice feller behind the counter I get lost very easily....so where is the boat? He points to a QR code...I snap it and off I go.....then I come back.....then I go again....third time round the carpark blindly following Google I realise the bunch of cones across an exit is actually because of a collapsed drain cover so I sneak past them and at last find some boats....Lots of boats.....more random driving around and there is a yellow sticky on a Harbour wall and I find the boat!Leggi altro

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  • Mark HolbrookIstanbul!Viaggiatore

    Spoleto

    1 maggio, Italia ⋅ ☀️ 17 °C

    I had hoped to take the quick route across Italy'cos I hurt but I end d up with the slow route....Google Maps is very difficult to follow when it keeps on flashing up alternative routes and you are on a motorbike with dozens of Italians trying to kill you with their nasty little cars....Anyway...slow route it was and I had to stop and take this snap....Papal Fortress and yes Lucrezia was 'ereLeggi altro

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  • Mark HolbrookIstanbul!Viaggiatore

    Ouch!

    30 aprile, Italia ⋅ ⛅ 21 °C

    Well..not the day I expected....So I have tooth problems. This is normal for me, I go away and then have to find the local dentist. I think it is something in my genes. 60 years ago my father would have his dentures serviced in Margate when we were on holiday next door at Westgate and then spend the two weeks with no teeth. But I digress...on the ferry from Barcelona to Rome a filling fell out so I went to a dentist this morning expecting a temporary filling but she said the root was exposed and I was at risk of an abscess...so after much discussion I had it pulled out and an implant screwed into the hole. Very sore and then she told me I can only have liquids for a week!!!! On a different note, if you look at the vessel anchored off you will see it has three masts in the fore part but nothing aft...Any ideas what it is or how to use it's location and time to discover what it is?Leggi altro

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