Archive for October, 2010

October
24th
2010

Istanbul Cycle Tourists – Oct


Istanbul cycle tourists

During our cycle tour from Spain to Istanbul via a long and winding route we made regular use of the website warmshowers.org. Members offer to put you up for a night or two in a similar way to popular hospitality website couch surfing but with a solely cycling based membership. Now that we are settled in Istanbul for the winter we’re happy to fill the role of hosts ourselves, although we weren’t expecting many guests as the weather got colder. – Posted by Justin

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October
18th
2010

Gallipoli Sans Bicycles


Gallipoli sans bicycles

We had only been in Turkey for a few days when the Gallipoli campaign was mentioned. We were sitting at a shaded picnic table about to eat lunch and two men came over to offer us some green melon that they had thoughtfully sliced into mouth-sized chunks. After they had finished their own lunch they returned to offer us cigarettes and show off heart and lung surgery scars caused by smoking. – Posted by Emma

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October
10th
2010

Hibernating By The Bosporus


Hibernating by the Bosporus

These last few days, winter has started to wrap itself around Istanbul. We have watched blue skies grey over and rain soak through our shoes as the outside temperature has plummeted from 30 down to 10 degrees. While the Blue Mosque looks particularly impressive against the muted sky, our building’s central heating has been turned on and it feels good just to be indoors with thick walls between us and the elements. – Posted by Emma

Posted in cycle touring, travel, turkey | 6 Comments »

October
3rd
2010

Istanbul Bike Shops


Istanbul bike shops

Our bikes have travelled around 12,000km since they left the Thorn workshop in June 2009 and have not yet had any attention from a professional bike mechanic. While we are fairly happy carrying out day-to-day maintenance I really wanted to get an expert check-up and some advice before we headed off further east in 2011. When we decided to take a break from our cycle tour and spend the winter in Istanbul I began to look for information about bike mechanics in the city. – Posted by Justin

Posted in cycle touring, travel, turkey | 14 Comments »