Over the last couple of days we had a great cruise op the Bosphorus and walked up to a ruin from where you could see out to the Black Sea ( see pic of Don pointing). On the boat we passed a village famous for it's yoghurt I had read about in a turkish cookbook Rose Morton leant me. Fantastic taste, served with icing sugar. A relaxing day which we needed as the Friday was taken up fully by touristy sights: The Aya Sofia which was amazing, specially considering it was built abou 3 to 500AD by the Romans. Then the Topaki Palace with its amazing mosaics . (I think the room we are putting on the blog is the Circumcision Room).

Saturay we saw that the Prelube Hashrun (prelude for Euro Hash) had registration a couple of 100m from our hotel so we rocked up and Don had a run. Definitely, hashers are the same all over the world. Down/downs, namings and all the other shananigans but easy and friendly to talk to . One guy from Canberra Hash brought up the Kangaroo valley Run which is infaomus in his Hash. The On on was at a cafe under the Galata Bridge with a beautiful sunset .

So today we stopped being tourists and turned into wannabe cyclists instead. No worries getting up in time for a 7 am ferry as the (Blue) mosque next door wails out its prayer call at 5am. It is a bit like a mexican wave of callers from all the different mosques.

Two hour ferry then into the saddle and up hill and down dale heading towards Gallipoli.

A couple flats slowed us down but we were offered tea by interested spectators at the petrol station where we did repairs.

One curios student asked me what I thought of Turkish soldiers. I answered, "They were pretty good at defending their homeland and pretty good shots." That answer seem ed to please him. So much so that he gave us a framed photo of the tukish hero, Attaturk.

After a hot 77 km day we are now in the small town of Biga where we are flashpacking: a 3 star hotel with our own shower and a lovely beer garden with very reasonable prices for food and beer.