Today is when we have to sort things out. that means the hassle of getting stuff washed etc. It's too cold for the socks and grundies to dry and so take the stuff to Adam's Laundry up the road. Adam sells handicraft goods out the front and has the washing machines out the back. Next up, we have to start sorting out the next leg and it's a hassle. We were wondering if we could get a direct flight to Goa in India.....so we check the net and then do it the old fashioned way. We head out to the travel agencies. They are still used a lot here and can offer better prices than the net. Turns out there is a cheap flight on Monday night but it will take 24 hours and stop off all around the Middle East. Mrs. Gibbs and myself have done this in the old days and it's not a pleasant experience. We have a conflab on the phone and Mrs. Gibbs says "Dont do it, you know what it's like". She's right, one of the stop offs is Al Sharjah and that would be a 10 hour stopover. It's one of the strictest Muslim nations in the UAE. So we scrap the idea.

Dubai had been on the agenda and so we now go back to this altenative. We find a flight for Monday which will be non-stop and take 4 hours. That will be a bit of a luxury considering how long some of our other modes of transport have taken. We now need to go back to the travel agency and see if we can get a better price, we do but agree on a cash transaction. This then becomes a hassle as the UK bank wont allow the money withdrawl to exceed the usual UK limit. We just about scrape the money together ....all this for a saving of 30 quid...then again 30 pounds will go a long way in India.

We can now breathe a bit easier, but it has been a hassle today. All part of the joy of being on the road folks. Tomorrow we plan to relax a bit and intend to get on a boat for a tour of the Bosphorous Sea. Earlier in the day we walked down to the port and very exciting it was. So we know where to go and are looking forward to it. I may even get a haircut tomorrow. Time permitting.

Once again we thank you for the comments, please keep them coming and also please pass the blog link onto anyone who may be interested. We're actaully at Number 8 on the Travelpod top 100 travel blogs. You can check our ranking by typing ' gibbslocates ' into Google. Many Thanks.

Lloyd & Grant