Bulgaria, Romania and Hungry.

Welcome to the penultimate set of photos.

Thought it was Bulgaria we were going to?

A nice little camping spot.

Cathedral of the assumption of the virgin mary.

Welcome to Romania!

Right let see if we can find the dracula bloke.

In the castle grounds.

Tut anyone?

Camping with the cows.

A little bit of heaven.

It is what it says on the tin - CRAP!

Cart for sale, not sure if the car is included.

Draculas bank!!!

Doing a bit of laundry.

Time for some wine tasting.

A little tipsy.

In the under ground celler.

A typical romanain church.

I wish i lived here.

Will so be home bound!!!!

Penultimate Notes from our Amazing Adventure...

These last few blog entries, for me has been one of - if not The hardest part of the whole trip! The finality of posting these entries means that eventhough we got home about 4 weeks ago, the adventure really is at an end now. Just the last few places to tell you about.......

The previous entry saw us leave Turkey and from that point we headed back into eastern europe en route to meeting my parents for a long weekend in Budapest. We drove up the eastern coast of Bulgaria along it's very pleasant riviera and our first major stop was in Bucharest, where we went to have a look around inside a church with the most amazing frescoes. Hopefully Adam can dig out the relevant photos (!!)

Whilst in Romania we decided to go on the hunt for Dracula or Vlad Tepes the Impaler - which was great fun and resulted in us visiting his birth place Sighisora, where we walked up through the pretty old town towards the aptly named Church on the Hill through a very atmospheric covered walkway complete with wooden steps and cobwebs, we wandered around the graveyard and admired the wardens house. We couldn't resist a visit to Bran castle as well. The castle was really grand and had an interesting history aside from it's very tenuous link to the man himself, although when we arrived i think Adam was a little dissapppointed at the scale of the castle and that there were no bats flying from it or plumes of dry ice to add to the spooky atmosphere!!
We managed to get some suitably tacky souveniers such as tankards & amusing postcards before heading off up into the Marmures region. On the way we visited Rasnov with it's citadel which we had fun exploring and also it's rather odd giant hollywood style sign towering over the hamlet.
Romania was such a pleasant surprise and i would go as far as to say it was one of my favourite places. The scenery in Transylvania was absolutely stunning, the mountains, lush & verdant forests and scale of the region were so impressive - and we were lucky to still have the glorious weather with us too.
We had some of the nicest camping although at times it was a little difficult to find. One afternoon we were lucky enough to explore down a track which led us to a perfect pitch by a river. We had a lazy afternoon, a few of the local beers & a nice supper. As it got to dusk we notcied a clanking sound and wondered what it could be. Adam saw out of his window a rather large herd of cattle approaching, i thought we had accidentally parked up in a farmers field - & not for the first time - but Ad said that the herd appeared to be unsupervised. It was the strangest thing, as the sun went down Treacle was surrounded by a rather curious crowd of cows. The sound of their bells, the river burbling away and the steady cruch, rip of them pulling out mouthfuls of grass on their way home was a wonderful if slightly strange experience.

I was rather reluctant to leave Romania as it had truly surpased my expectations but Adam had found 2 great looking places in Hungary and suggested we visit those in the time we had left before meeting up with mum & dad.
Tokaj was the first place and at my sugestion (insistance) we checked into a pension for the first time since leaving turkey - i was surprised we even got a room we were quite dirty, tired & stinky by then. The woman who ran the place was very welcoming & friendly and it was immaculate, we were really happy. We went out for a delicious meal and a glass of the local wine - which was a semi sweet white and very tasty and had a lovely meal of chicken tokaj style with prunes and sauce, veg and the sorely missed chips!! The restaurant overlooked the river and it was a great evening, candle lit meal and chilled wine - bordering on romantic!!
the next day we went on to Adam's second choice - Edge, happily another wine tasting town! This time we stayed at a campsite within staggering distance of the cluster of wine cellars at the end of the valley in a horseshoe arrangement.
The price worked out at about £0.30 a glass so even at this late stage in the trip on the last few pennies we were still able to enjoy ourselves and sample a variety of wines. Yeay!
At the campsite we noticed a lady camped up on the ridge above us, eating alone so i went up to share some of the wine we had bought with her. She was called Heddy - i think - and we arranged to stroll up to one of the wine cellars the following evening. The next day we did All our laundry of which there was a rather aromatic mountain, Ads drank about a litre of the loacl red wine that we had bought the evening before & then had a big snooze sprawled out under a tree at the campsite - snoring quite loudly - whilst i read a book. We both caught the sun a fair bit that afternoon, then i t was time to go for drinks with our new friend. She took us to a little cellar that we had previously overlooked and it ran twice as deep back into the hillside than any of the others we had been in. It was dark, dank, cold and musty and very "local". We sampled a glass of the infamoous Bulls Blood - quite strong and dry - then went back to the sweeter variety. The owner brought over a special glass tube to dispense our wine - a strange stem into which he had sucked up some of the wine from the barrel, rested it on his shoulder and then let the wine orush out into the glasses by sliding his finger off the end of the spout... what a delight to watch!

We were sad to leave our new friend the next day - and i do regret that we didn't exchange details. She had been on the road cycling through europe on her own for two years and i really enjoyed her company - an eccentric character to say the least. When she told me the previous evening that she was an avid reader and that she had nothing left to read i decided to give her my treasured copy of The Gargoyle which my dad had bought for me on a trip to london before we left. It is one of the very few books i have read more than once - it was compelling, moving and brilliantly written and i was happy to give it a new home.

Last scraps of Turkey...

From Katranci we headed further inland to visit the legendary cliffs of Pamukkale, by this point though we were more & more aware of our dwindling finances and decided not to walk up along the top of the calcium formations but instead we went for dinner in a little restaurant which had a balcony overlooking the cliffs. It was lovely and once the sun went down there were lights which illuminated the cliffs with a soft blue glow.
We got up bright & early the next morning and by the afternoon had arrived at a campsite in Ephesus.
Adam suggested we visit a local village _ Sirince _ which is famous for it's vineyards & fruit wines. Never one to shy away from an opportunity to sample the local tipple, we made it a priority to go straight up there! As Adam was driving lucky me go to go for the wine tasting - which was very pleasant - there was a range of different flavours, all incredibly sweet - from a plain white wine through to a dark cherry flavoured one. Also strawberry and a lovely peach flavour. We indulged in a box of 3 and retired to the campsite for our dinner of pasta with tuna and a whole lot of wine. A lovely evening. We had every intention of going to visit the ruins at Ephesus and could actually make out the amphitheatre from our campsite but on reflection, once we saw the ticket price to go in we decided that we had really seen enough ruins in the past 2 or 3 weeks and that Turkey isn't that far away should we wish to go back and visit another time.
Another factor in the decision was a little accident i had at the campsite in Pamukkale - when i somehow managed to fall out of the back of Treacle when she was stationary and i was sober. I cracked my shin on the little step that drops down to enable me to get into the back of the car more easily - and it was starting to swell up by this point and was fairly uncomfortable to walk on.
We left just before lunch on the 19th Aug our destination was Istanbul via Iznik but that was a few days drive away so we took it steady until mid afternoon when we got stuck in the biggest traffic jam we had seen since Poland! It must have been a regular occurrence as there was an elderly lady wandering up and down the three lanes of stuck traffic with a wicker basket full of warm freshly made gozleme. mm yum. Everyone pretty much was out of their cars stood around chatting, picking berries from roadside shrubs and walking up the long hill to try to establish what the delay was. We got chatting to a friendly group of lads in the car next to us - who were also on their way to Istanbul. One, Ozkan, could speak pretty good English and after rooting around in the boot of his car came over and presented us each with a different book. We were chuffed and rather bemused to note that they were in English too. Mine was entitled "Nature:cause or effect?" and Adam's tome was called "The Fruits of Belief". They are by Bediuzzaman Sais Nursi & go some way towards explaining some of the beliefs and by ""demonstrating the essential truth & reasonablesness(sp)"" of the Qur'an. He was a great guy and was in no way trying to do a roadside conversion but just succeeded to shed a little light on a mysterious and intriguing subject.
He gave us his e-mail address so if any of you have any questions about Islam or the Qur'an, i know just the guy to ask!

Iznik was a lovely little village & we camped right beside the lake there, which was as clear as glass. Had a look at & bought some of the pottery that they are famous for, enjoyed some wonderful cakes and as it was the night before then month long Muslim fast - we got some absolutely delicious Ramadan bread. Lush.

We were lucky enough to be in Istanbul for the start of Ramadan - so one evening popped down to the area near the blue mosque and the Aya Sofia as we had heard that there is sometimes a light show projected onto the walls of the mosque. When we got down there it was total carnage!! It seemed the whole of the city & it's family were out for a twilight picnic and a stroll. To say it was packed would be an understatement. Everywhere we looked were groups of people with huge feasts spread out on blankets or on the many little picnic sets which had appeared for communal use. It was lovely, such a great atmosphere.
We went to a little snack stall to get something to eat - something we had both been craving for a while - a jacket potato. But this, dear readers was no ordinary jacket potato, oh no.... it was the sexiest spud ever. With not one not two but 12 fillings :o) some of the more unusual being chopped gerkins, cous cous & olives...


And so that's it from Turkey, a wonderfully diverse country with so much to offer and they truly know how to treat a tourist & the meaning of genuine hospitality!!

Turkey - PT 2

So here we are in Turkey Again but this time its only a flying visit.

A great caming spot by the sea and next to a old castle.

A Classic!


A picture of a landy whos owner had a landy garage here. Its a 300 tdi!!!

What a great shot of the mountains.

Chimera/Flaming Rocks ( N 36 25.778, E30 27.907)

Things that are not allowed on the motorway! - Like say if your car is on fire!!!!!!

Camping by the lake.

These yellow arms are everywhere!!! - Istanbul.

GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!

Can i help you with anything?????

As it says on the tin Aya Sofia church/mosque!!!

Aya Sofia.

The Obelisk from egypt.

All seeing eye and some water pipes.

Aya Sofia at night.

The Blue Mosque.

Well thats about it from asia and now we are heading for home.