We woke to a much cooler day with temperatures to get as high as 17°C; the norm for this time of the year. Today we met our bus driver Hussein and the manager of the tour company. A few of us received clarification from the management about the tour as some of us had organised changes to the original itinerary including us; we have a day at Gallipoli which the others do not. Our bus is a very comfortable 15 seater bus which enables us to each have window seat and be able to move around it.

After the introduction and meetings it was off to The Topkapi Palace. This Palace is closed on Tuesday and with Thursday being a National Holiday the Palace was overflowing with visitors. We estimate about 10,000 visitors which helps to give an indication of how large the palace
grounds were. The palace is now a museum and holds some of the many gifts received by the Sultans during their reign which ended in 1922 along with the Ottomon empire. All the buildings and rooms were ornately decorated and each appeared to serve only one function. There were Harem rooms, Privy council rooms, sitting rooms, a circumcision room, bath rooms etc etc. There was no way one could get through the entire palace in a day with this many people around but our guide did a good job under the circumstances. As Turkey had been the Muslim capital of the world for centuries it has many religious artifacts (including Christian) with many of the them now located in the Palace. One of the artificats was Moses' staff.

After the Palace it was off to the Bosphorus Strait for a quick bite to eat and a boat trip for an hour and a half. The Bosphorus is the strait which forms part of the boundary between Europe and Asia. It is a very busy waterway connecting the Black Sea with the Sea of Marmara (which is connected by the Dardanelles to the Aegean Sea and hence to the Mediterranean). The Asian side of the strait was more residential than the European side and based on the houses, villas and boats along the strait there is a lot of wealth about.

Once back to shore it was into the bus and off to Safranbolu in the province of Karabük. The trip went through quite mountainous countryside with a number of small villages along the way. We stopped at a Truck Stop, for lack of another term, along the way. As well as the usual faclilites it had a fantastic convenience store with rows of sweets, olives, dried fruit, spices etc. The girls loaded up with new items to taste and we hit the road again. One thing we noticed here is that petrol is very expensive – about 3 USD per liter.

By the time we got Safranbolu we had paid about 12USD in road tolls. Turkey is not the cheapest of countries to run a car but it does not seem to deter people with most of the cars appearing to be less than 5 years old. We passed many many trucks along the route with a lot of them (the ones with the top heavy loads) on their way to Iran.

Safranbolu was on the Silk Road and was a center for Saffron. It takes about 3,000 Saffron flowers to make 100gms of Saffron – hence its high cost. Safranbolu was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Town in 1994. Narrow cobblestone streets, Ottoman era houses and architecture. Although we arrived at 830pm we managed to wander through a bit of the town before finally getting some dinner at a traditional Ottoman restaurant and turning in just before midnight. The hotel was a 400 year old stopover for the caravans travelling on the Silk Road.