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Another early morning on the road, having had a terrible night’s sleep due to misbehaving air conditioning in the hotel. I know, privileged much? It’s alright if you know it’s going to be hot, you’ll get a fan or change how you sleep - but alternating between 21 and 30 degrees in the room was no fun at all.

First stop this morning was the Saklikent carpet weaver’s collective. A group brought together with government and other funding to promote the ancient skills of knot-work carpet weaving. They work in wool, silk and cotton to make some truly spectacular pieces of art. One of the pieces I saw today has a knot count of over 440dpi, which is incredible to see in real life.

Today we started heading towards the south-western corner of Turkey and the coastal town of Fethiye. We had a few hours’ drive ahead of us so along the way we heard a few new facts.

Roughly 65% of the Turkish population is under 35, with roughly a quarter of the 80 million residents being in school at any given time. One university entrance exam is held per year, run by the government, and if you miss it or fail it, then your life’s on hold for another year. About 2.5 million people are going for the 250k available university positions, so competition’s tough.

Today we started our third day in Selçuk with another delicious breakfast of local olives, eggs and other great things. I could really get used to this. An early start was on the cards due to the long transit, so we got our butts in gear and headed up to the Basilica of St. John the Evangelist and Ayasuluk Kalesi.

More crumblies, beautiful views and a warm day. Emphasis on the warm. It’s interesting to try and infer the designs of places based on their remaining ruins, and see how people put things together in the world’s largest incomplete 3d puzzle games.

Today was scheduled to be a long day of travel, and it definitely lived up to it. Starting in our accommodation, the ANZAC hotel in Çanukkale, we aimed to get to Selçuk by late afternoon, including a stop at the ruins of the city of Troia. Google maps says it’s five and a half hours, but that doesn’t include traffic in Izmir nor the stops along the way.

Today was the first full day on the road with the tour group, all of us piling into the van at early o’clock and starting our journey to the monuments of the Gallipoli campaign.

A few things we learnt on the way out, before the scenery started…

Istanbul’s a city of 17 million people and 4 million cars, thankfully we were going in the “outbound” direction this morning so traffic wasn’t terrible. We’re traffic going the other direction, I have a feeling we may still be there. It was surprising to me that it seems that people just hang out on the side of highways, waiting for lifts. There were literally hundreds of people as we left the city, just hanging out, looking like they were ready for work.

Realising that breakfast was part of the hotel stay really made my morning. Procuring that which sustains me was a little bit concerning after last night’s adventure, and I really wasn’t looking forward to stumbling out into the street, half asleep looking for food.

We weren’t due to meet up with the tour until 1300 today, so we went back to Gülhane park for a wander and to explore more of the space. What a lovely area - beautiful parkways and even thought it’s clearly all due to be replanted soon - the gardens are lovely. We got our first good look (on foot) of the “new city” across the bay; it’s truly amazing how many people clearly live in this area, the gateway between Europe and Asia.

Transit day, our flight was due to leave at 10:15am, so to get there in time we were up before 0600.

Caught the train from Covent Garden to Green Park, transferred to the Victoria line down to London Victoria station. From there it was a rather pleasant journey on the Gatwick Express to the airport.

Victoria station is a bit of a mess, there’s construction around a large section of the outside and GPS doesn’t work so you can’t find where you are until you do half a lap.

Given it was raining before we arose, we chose a few things on the things-to-do list which were generally indoors. The first of these was the Churchill War Rooms, the underground bunker complex that was used for most of the second world war to run the show. There’s a lovely self-paced audio tour of the facilities almost exactly as they were, along with an expanded museum area dedicated to Churchill’s life. A truly inspiring man, well worth learning about.

All the tube!

Heathrow Express to Paddington station, what a lightning run. A lovely transit system that whisks you away from the airport to the city at great speed, depositing you at a central hub of transit. In this case, Paddington station, which allowed us to navigate our way through the myriad tunnels, all alike, to London Victoria Station via the tube.

We found the location of our first night’s stay after doing a lap and a half of Victoria station (I had forgotten that Google Maps works offline on my phone :)) The Holly House Hotel is an adorable converted walk-up with 26 cosy rooms. Ours had two double beds and a king single along with an ensuite, which for 50 quid a night was amazingly good value. The four floors of stairs was a test of my knee joints which I would have rapidly failed had we stayed much longer. The included continental breakfast made the start of the day much easier as well.

I’m travelling with AuntyMary to London for nearly a week, then heading to Turkey for the balance of a month. This’d be a lot easier if it weren’t for a few niggling issues:

• I live in Australia, so it’s taking us at least 25 hours and change to get there.
• I’m a freakishly tall biped with a busted knee.
• I can’t afford business class flights.

The first flight was pretty good, a 3/3/3 layout Boeing 777 with a spare seat between us for stretching out. The second flight’s been a little squishy, packed into a 3/4/3 layout Airbus A380, completely filled to the gills. It’s a lovely quiet plane, something I couldn’t say for the 777, and well fitted out for all and sundry. It’s just not made for giants with shoulders that hang over the arm rests and poke people in the ears. :(