Europe in 40 days

Woke to another fine day at 5.03 am and breakfast not available until 8 am, so I had an hour on Facebook and e mails while Clive was imitating a piggy besides me, then went back to sleep and got up at 7 am. (Clive was still in piggy mode, in fact pig mode)

The Bidet, it’s supposed to have a gentle flow so that one may wash ones nether regions in a ladylike manner. I turned the tap on expecting a gentle warm cleanse and what I got instead was a force at mach 3 that broke the sound barrier, not only were my underwear soaked through but the bathroom door got a good drenching too, luckily it missed the lady garden. Lucky it wasn’t Clive I did warn him but wished I hadn’t.

Breakfast was lovely really fresh and healthy so we filled up on that then collected our six frozen water bottles from the kitchen which they had kindly frozen for us overnight and filled the thermos with boiling water for coffee on route.

Off we went headed to the Egeabat ferry this took an hour an a half and was 70 Turkish lira or about £10 for the crossing. While on board we were bombarded with people selling orange juice, coffee, tea, big biscuit things and souvenirs. Travellers were feeding the seagulls which were Incredibly close, I stayed away didnt want that poop on my head.

Aft

After crossing on the ferry we made our way round the coastline, it was stunningly beautiful I couldn’t take enough pics. Then, we passed all the farming land which was unbelievable, it was as if humans had agreed with nature to create artwork on the landscape, we were amazed by it all.

We reached the Turkish border at Ipsala at around 10.44 and that’s where we remained until 1.15 pm what a killer, the Greek border took around 15 minutes but before that we popped into the duty free shop for a bottle of gin and one Jim Beam. Result.

Greece, what an eye opener. Only ever been to Kos and Rhodes in the past other than a day trip to Athens never visited mainland Greece. I thought Greece was dry with lots of olive trees how wrong can you be. This part of the country borders on Bulgaria with a mountain range in between, stunning I couldn’t believe it, it looked like Austria, took loads of pics, looked at the map and realised we were driving through a Nationial Park, this is a must do return to trip as there are a number of there lakes too which we could just see if we craned our necks.

We stopped for a cup of coffee from the thermos and a bee landed on Clives leg and wandered up the leg of his shorts. Clive said in a kind of scared voice ‘it’s gone up my shorts’, we then spent the next fifteen minutes trying to coax it out with a little piece of cardboard. Eventually it got fed up and flew off, I gave Clive a wet wipe to wipe off the dripping sweat.

We had been driving what seemed forever and I had lost the use of my legs so in my nasty voice I said ‘we need to stop for coffee or I’m going to get a deep vein thrombosis’ he replied ‘ Ok my love anything you say’ so we pulled in to Asprovalta for a coffee, not realising I’d you ask for an Americano you only get half a cup so 2 minutes later we are back on our way, thrombosis averted.

There is no internet in Greece, at least not for 557 kilometres from the border. Miraculously it appeared 18 km before we reached our Airbnb. The owner had threatened us with extra charges, cancelling our room and eventually thinking of ringing the police because he thought we had been kidnapped. We assured him we were fine and he was so relieved we were safe he bought us honey, bread and butter for our breakfast even though the apartment was only 26 Euros per night to start with, he had been waiting for 4 hours for us and lived 20 km away

There was a second bee it was the size of a large cricket, it flew in through my window, hit Clive on the leg and fell on the floor on his side, I examined it from my side and informed him it may only be stunned, I have never seen him move so fast, he parked the car on the motorway , leapt out and removed the offending insect in one deft move whilst clutching his shorts tightly with his legs stating ‘well he’s got a bit of a headache’

Well the apartment is lovely and we’ve had our dinner so off to bed ready for a walking tour of Thessaloniki in the morning then onwards to Igoumenista for the ferry to Italy at midnight’ Speak to you all tomorrow if there’s internet xx

Some random pics from today

Started out at 7.30am with the food bag overflowing. Pasties, Kentucky fried Chick’n, salads, sandwiches and copious amounts of coffee, we didnt want to run out of food.

9.45 ran out of food.

An uneventful day really got to the outskirts of Izmir and tried the services, they were pretty basic, no toilet paper or hand towels in the toilets and 3 lira for a cup of Turkish tea, that’s today’s budget blown. For the British audience a lira is worth around 15 p.

Took a pic of this little boy at a junction who was so happy sitting on the wall singing, his mother, father and brother were dodging traffic trying to sell bottles of water to the passing cars. I said ‘well he looks happy’, his dad said ‘yes he doesn’t have to start selling until he is four, by then he will have learned to dodge the faster cars’.

Turks must love Disney in their gardens as we saw around 40 of these shops selling statues of snow white and what looked like cocker spaniel statues, was thinking of picking one up for our friend Graham, he loves his garden and a cocker spaniel would look lovely under his 99 inch telly on the edge of the jacuzzi

The landscape on the way was stunning, all the fields full with crops, I just love those straight lines. Then the best ones were the fields and fields of sunflowers.

Got to Canakkale at 6pm todays total 651 kilometres . The Sunsan hotel is just right, it’s on the beach and has a lovely pool. Food was good and priced fairly, music was bloody awful some rapper harping on about his daddy’s hoe stubbing her toe on his boombox or something similar.

Nipped down to the supermarket for a bottle of wine just as the sun was setting and said I’ll get some pics of that on the way back, no chance Clive had a bout of the Deli Bellies and had to get back so squeezed a couple of quick clicks as we hurried back, I’m on the balcony with the wine as I dont want to be anywhere near the Deli belly aroma thank you very much.

There is a roof bar here which we haven’t explored yet might go up now and try and get some pics of the little boats anchored up by the beach.

Rooftop bar was empty so took a couple of pics and came back to our wine

will love you and leave you for today with a few random pics from day 1

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