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After being in Istanbul for 8 nights it was time to move on. Our route from Istanbul was to head south west along the coast to the Dardanelles and Gallipoli. As we started to leave Istanbul the weather forecast appeared to be right, storms. As the storms came in..  we just missed them. We followed the sunshine south. The heat intensified as we got further away

Road to Gallipoli

from Istanbul’s storms.  It reached around 36c.. In the heat we found a place to camp just near the a “beach resort” and bar.. Finally we got our opportunity to have a swim in the sea.. Wow the water was warm but nothing like the 24c that at the Black sea.. If I had to guess it was probably around 20c. Either way it was a welcome change after riding in the heat. It was nice to get out of the water, have a beer and relax… After a beer we went back to where we had camped to find that there was a 100% fire ban.. That included all stoves due to a recent fire further down the coast. No Flameage caused us a few problems 1) no restaurant and 2) can’t cook.. Luckily the guy who ran the beach bar could cook us up some fast food.. In the end we had about 4 double gin and tonic’s while eating some quality chicken nuggets.. hmm healthy food… It was worth it.. until we had to get back into our stinking hot tent… In the process letting loads of bugs into the tent which all had a field day with Heather… we now call her James’ insect decoy. We ended up waking early completely dehydrated, with nothing to drink except a few mouth fulls of water… (Because in the drunken state the night before “we” (Heather) spilt it over James’ sleeping bag.. Oh well.. time to do the

View from a bar on the beach near Gallipoli

next bit of our ride to Gallipoli… This is where our second food saga began.. Unfortunately there was nothing open that served food at 9am in the morning.. a few places served beer but not food.. thinking that hair of the dog was probably a bad idea we just ordered some drinks from the restaurants and had a late… late.. late brunch while we waited for the ferry… Anyway back to Gallipoli.

Gallipoli has become somewhat of a “right of passage” for Aussies based on what we read in the aussie news in London..

Lone Pine Memorial - Gallipoli

Actually when we got there we didn’t see any Aussies.. It seemed to us that it was a melting pot of Turkish people going to see where the Turkish had one of their great military battles of the 20th Century. I am probably guessing that most of the Aussies who come only come around Anzac day.. Every other hotel or motel has some Aussie name like “Sydney Hotel” or “Sydney Aussie Place Hotel”… Most of them seemed from outside appearances to be pretty dodgy.. much like our camp site of the night before..  After our drinks of coke and water for breakfast we headed out to Lone Pine.

View on the Dirt Track to Lone Pine - Gallipoli

On the way up the dirt track from the coast I had just finished saying to Heather over the bike to bike radio’s that this dirt track was likely to be snake infested… bingo around the next corner a big black snake about 1.5 meters long trying to get out of the way of my bike as I rode past… Luckily I just missed it.. It still gave me a rude shock. Lone Pine is one of the key Australian battle memorials of the conflict. Something like 4000 Aussies died for the biggest advance that the ANZAC’s made in the entire conflict. It must have been pretty terrible as soon as they got to the top of lone pine there was yet another ridge higher only a few hundred meters further back.. Bob Hawke opened the memorial there while he was prime minister of Australia. The views from the memorial are fantastic along the coast with the brilliant blue waters.

View from Lone Pine - Gallipoli

After having a small break in the shade at Lone pine we headed back down to Anzac Cove. Having heard the stories about the beach landing its very difficult to comprehend how steep it actually is until you see it in the flesh.

Landscape of Anzac Cove - Gallipoli

The beach is pretty steep just by itself.. Then you take into account that there is yet another 200 meter slope just a short distance further.. It would have been a real shock for the troops.

Anzac Cove - Gallipoli

After our stay at Gallipoli we headed towards the Lunch, Ferry and onwards to Troy.. The Ferry crossing was smooth and quick. Costing us 8TL each for the motorcycles it was nice and cheap. The ride from the ferry to Troy was steaming hot and there is no accommodation  worth mentioning near Troy. It seems most people take Dolmus (shared taxi’s) from the town where the ferry crosses. A guy found us sitting in the shade looking for accommodation and asked us if we needed assistance. He directed us to a place where we could sleep/camp on the beach.. YAY..

Sunset over the Aegean Sea - Near Troy

That was where the fun began. He gave us directions to the beach and said that the French stayed there.. After riding for about 20km along a dirt track we decided to do a U-Turn… Right at that moment a car with French number plates drove past.. we decided to do an about turn and follow the car.. Thankfully we did and found a nice beach where we swam for a few hours to cool down in the late afternoon… We later pitched our tent on the beach… ahh Relaxation. Our second swim for the trip, This time in the Aegean Sea… The water was beautiful and warm. The sunset was fantastic. The following morning we woke early to go and sea Troy before the heat set in… We managed to get there around 9.  We ended up hanging around an official tour so we could hear the inside story. te he he.. After this we headed out by about 10:30 to a cafe near by so that we could plan the next section of our journey.

Ruins - Troy

After 4 days of working to complete all the remaining paper work we now had time to go and do more touristy stuff. First off the ranks was the topkapi palace. This is where the Sultans used to live for many years before they started to prefer more European style palaces which got built further up the Bosphorus towards the black sea. The palace was a really welcome change after we had been “Palaced out” visiting many of the European Palaces over the last 6years.

The view from the Topkapi Palace of the Bosphorus

The difference was immediately visible with open beautiful gardens and nice tile work that really sets the place apart from its European rivals. The view out over the Bosphorus was fantastic. The palace gardens provided a really nice cool oasis in the 36c temperatures which was such a pleasant surprise. The extravagance of the palace was also superb not being too over the top like some other palaces we have seen.

Some of the extravagance of the Palace

After visiting the palace we decided to go and get some photos of the boats moored offshore in the sea of Marmara. We thought that the best time to get some images would be at night to really bring out the sheer number of boats. There must have been at least 300 boats all moored waiting to either go or come through the bosphorus. I personally have never seen so many huge ships in one place in my life. (Click the Picture below to expand the image).  While at the coast taking photos I was amazed to see so many families still having picnics etc in the cool of the evening despite it being 9:30-10pm at night. It was very busy.

Boats on the Sea of Marmaras waiting for the Bosphorus

The following day we decided that we would take a ferry tour of the Bosphorus and see the Asian side. It was interesting on the Ferry looking out to the City that has sprawled along the coast. It really reminded me of what it looks like in Sydney looking at the houses along the Harbour.

Icecream Istanbul Style

The only difference is there are no mosques that I know of in Sydney on the Harbour while they are one of the big features of the Istanbul skyline. The ferry trip took around 5hrs:30minutes as we had a 2hour stop at some tourist trap place which seems to only exist for the sake of an Army Base and a ruined castle / fort right near the entrance to the Black sea. It would be a very strong strategic point that’s for sure. On the way to the Ferry we found a shop which had an excellent range of plates that we found irresistible.

However we didn’t buy anything… until we walked past the same shop on the way back from the Ferry and had another look. The guy discounted the plates by about 50% so we caved in and got two plates.. which lead us to our next scenario… Unfortunately the local post company PTT in Turkey does not ship Ceramic goods unless they are in a wooden box… but they don’t sell wooden boxes and won’t tell you where you can get them from… fantastic.. That lead us to the situation where we didn’t have  a means to get the plates home that we had just purchased. Thankfully just near our apartment there was a UPS office who gave us a special discount on shipping the plates back to Australia… lets hope they get there in one piece..

Topkapi Palace Gardens

Mosque in istanbul

Now its onwards to Gallipoli….