Istanbul, Turkey, Thasos Greece , Bulgaria.

 

I arrive from Istanbul airport, and take a bus downtown to Kariköy (pronounced carry - ku) a two-hour ride for just TRL 60.  When I was in Turkey in November £1 bought just 20 TRL.  Now due to Erdogan's disastrous handling of the economy, £1 buys TRL 19-20, more than a 30% drop in value.  I walk around Karikoy for an hour and a quarter with my huge Berghaus rucksack, without data, looking for Juliet kitchen and rooms.  Lots of kind, well-intentioned Istanbulis help me, including one couple who send me in the wrong direction, unintentionally, when I'm actually really close.  In Juliet's I'm in a downstairs dorm room, and on the first night I have the room to myself.  Karikoy is a super-cool, trendy area of  Istanbul, on a peninsula on the Asian side of the City.  There are loads of bars, selling beer,lots of delicious bakeries, loads of cool food joints selling everything from falafel, burgers, hotdogs, gyros, seafood, Chinese food, Vegan food.  You have to get a ferry from Karikoy to the "mainland" of Istanbul at Eminonu, which is no hardship and my favourite way to travel.  Each journey costs around TRL7, and I load up my IstanbulCard frequently.  On the first morning, I get a new Vodafone SIM card, which means I can navigate my way around the Labyrinthe that is the in bazaar. First, I go to to Beyogul, where I stayed last time, and deliberate for a long time in Decathlon  before I buy myself a new backpack for Euro64, and a new water bottle, my third on this long trip! In the next few days I indulge in a lot  of shopping in the Bazaar in Istanbul.  I spend two days trying to relocate my favourite shop in the Bazaar,  AllahVerdi, selling Afghani jewellery and bags.  I spend a fortune buying 4 or 5 bags for me and my nieces.  The pieces are totally unique.  Lucky nieces to have me as an aunty!

I then locate a lovely little shop where I negotiate 6 beautiful cotton towels for just TRL 500 .  I then walk to the small TurkPost in Beyazit, and send the lot home for TRL 600 - more than the cost of the  towels!! I hope they arrive home, I want to update my linen to these beautiful, cool cotton towels in pastel colours.  I walk down to Eminonu, and get the ferry back to Karikoy.  Back in the hostel, there's a new tenant in my room, Zara from Berlin, she admires my Afghani bag, and so the next day I find the way back to AllahVerdi, and she also buys herself one of these beautiful unique pieces. Over the next days Zara , also Vegan, and I explore Istanbul together.  Sadly in Juliet's all the food contains either eggs, meat or Feta cheese or halloumi. For breakfast, we get bread and baked goods at a little bakery in Karikoy.  the old fellow who runs the shop always throws in a few extra little pastries. Then we get coffee down the road at Tchibo, A German coffee chain, which always has a bizarre little shop attached selling random things from workout gear, kitchen utensils, and pet toys.  

After our trip to the Bazaar we eat delicious tomato & walnut salads , with their pomegranate sauce, like a thick balsamic and hummus in Eminonu. 

That evening Zara wants to eat Asian, but the local Chinese restaurant has oyster sauce in everything, and Zara, stricter than I won't countenance that so we plump for falafel sandwiches for a couple of euro.  On our last day together in Istanbul, I guide Zara back to  the Haggia Sofia, which we settle down to sketch in our respective sketchbooks.  Zara is not prepared for the fact that when you sit down to sketch you become public property, and everyone thinks that they can come past, photograph you, video you, comment on the sketch, ask you where you are from etc.  But at least Zara has made a start in her empty sketch book!  That night, our last, we want to eat Asian again, and I find an Asian restaurant close to our hostel.  Zara gets on with the waiter, who is very kind , and turns up next morning to take her to her bus to Izmir, where she is going to camp, and work in an animal shelter , found using the app:  WorkAway.  

A word of warning:  On this and my last trip to Turkey, you see a lot of people wandering around the bazaar with plasters over their noses, and black eyes.  They come to Turkey for "cheap" nose jobs.  You see a lot of men with red dots all over their balding heads, they come for  hair transplants, not so dangerous, but equally painful.  When I went out with the  staff of the Irish embassy in Ankara, I asked what kind of issues they are dealing with.  One of the most common is nose jobs, and plastic surgery gone wrong, and these poor victims just pushed out into the City or the beach after the procedure.  There is no regulatory authority for plastic surgeons in Turkey (yet).  The problem is that unscrupulous operators set up with an ad on Facebook (cesspit), undercut their competitors, and when it all goes wrong they have disappeared  and cannot be traced.  Don't do it!  You are beautiful as you are! 

I am not so fortunate, and I hang out in the park down on the Bosphorus, until it is time to depart for my night bus to Kavala.  I sketch the scene.  

  I leave Istanbul, Turkey the same way I arrived in November the year before, at the huge Esenler bus station, a short ride on Istanbul's modern Metro system from the airport.  I get my last meal of beans and rice, and the friendly people locate me from the Brighton and Hove football team, as they all follow Premier league.  It's good to know that Brighton&Hove Albion, of our small City are tenth in the league. The 9 pm  bus which would get me into Kavala at 5am , 4 hours before the  Thasos ferry, is full so I have to get the 5pm bus.  On board is Russian 'nona' who has been travelling for 2 days with her 4 grandchildren, due to all the flights & airplanes from Moscow having been grounded, due to Putin's illegal war on Ukraine.  They are so well behaved.  We leave Turkish customs a few hours later, cross the bridge with armed  Turkish and Greek soldiers, at standoff at the moment.  On the Greek, EU side we have to lay our bags out on a metal table for the sniffer dog to sniff them all.  One young man has his bag searched by the Lady customs officer. Two young Turkish  people are led off for questioning   by the Greek police.  Welcome to the EU!  Luckily our bus departs on schedule.  I am unceremoniously dumped in Kavala town centre at 2:30 am.  I avoid the bars which are full of drunk people, and head for the port.  I can't sleep in the doorway of the Port authority due to loud disco music echoing across the gorgeous port of Kavala. I'm in Greece! I move to a closed cafe at 5 am and look for a socket to charge my dying phone.  I get a breakfast of 7-day croissant and cold coffee in a can from one of the  kiosks.  At 8 am I move to the ferry office, and buy my one-way ticket to Thasos for around Euro6.  I am so tired, so I do yoga stretches and salute to the sun (Surya Namaskar) on board to liven myself up.  We reach Thasos 1 and 1/2 hours later.  I step off and go to a bar for a cheese pastry and coffee.  My friend Stacey , and her friend Charlie arrive a few minutes later.  Stacey has owned a home on Thasos for 14 years, and is visiting for the first time in 18 months.  She has got lots to do, loads of people to see, and everyone wants to see her.  We drive around Thasos , and go to the port & beach of   Potos.  Thasos is one of the larger Greek islands, it's very green and mountainous, and the beaches have soft, white sand.  The Aegean sea is greeny-blue.  It's idyllic. Stacey points out huge gaps in the forest where the island was devoured by horrific forest fires in 2019.   We eat lunch at Hakuna Matata, Greek salad for me, Gyros for them, and head to the beach.  Lots of Stacey's friends stop to say hello.  In the evening we head back to her village, Theologos,

 to shower and get dressed to go out to the beautiful, remote beach restaurant, Beautiful Alice, at Aliki. Stacey is greeted like the long lost sister that she is by the owner Dimitria.  

We eat a seafood platter of delicious freshly caught fish, and yes, I eat a little squid.  I can't eat Octopus any longer after the Netflix film, "My friend , the Octopus".  I love the deep  fried spinach balls, and the tzatziki.  They have a really good chef at Beautiful Alice. I am zonked and head home to bed.  Charli and I turn down a ride on Thanassis' motorbike, more because us townies are scared by the winding roads than Thanassis' riding! 

Next morning we are up early as Stacey has more engagements  in Potos, and I head up to the beautiful waterfall and water mill to sketch.  I eat a lunch of Greek salad there, and get talking to some German tourists, who are incredulous at the stupidity of Brexit, and why we willingly cut ourselves off from Europe, and all this beauty.

That evening we drink the local firewater in the village bar, with the owner Stelios who is a character.  Then we head to local bar in village  .  The girls devour a meat platter, and I eat spinach balls  and yes, you guessed, Greek salad. 

On my last day we head to a small beach near Potos where we eat in a beach side restaurant, and head to the beach.  We visit the local campsite to see if I can rent a caravan for a few more days . The owner, a Socialist, offers me the choice of 2 caravans:   West:CIA or East: KGB (painted red).  At Euro35 per night it's more than my budget can afford.  

On the last evening together we head to the lively port: Potos for a last meal, which Charli, now fluent in Greek food orders.  Charli and Stacey have loads of friends to say goodbye to.  We drive home to Theologos on an empty tank, but luckily we make it up the mountain.  The next day we pack up the cottage, turn off the water and electricity until Stacey's next visit either in summer holidays or in September, after the school holidays. So many goodbyes.  They drop me in Potos , where I am catching the local bus to Pinos Port.  They are travelling to the other port , Thasos town, where they will get a waiting taxi from Cristopolos to Thessaloniki , the closest airport, now that it's only EasyJet who fly to this corner of Greece.  

I on the other hand rate my chances of getting a bus  to Bulgaria from Kavala.  I get a bus  a couple of hours later to Xanthi.  It's fast on the well-made Greek roads.  Sadly, in Xanthi there are no buses to Bulgaria either, so I wait another hour and get a bus to Alexandropoulos.  Sadly, here there are no buses to Bulgaria any longer either, just a tour leaving on June 10th.  So no good to me.  I decide to spend the night in the  nice City, and use Booking.com to check myself into Downtown hostel, where I think I am the only guest.  It has a nice kitchen, and a washing machine, so I use the opportunity to wash some of my clothes which haven't been washed since India! 

Train to Ormenio

Next morning I set my alarm for 7am and head to the train station for the 8am train to Ormenio, Greece's northern most City.  I walk straight past thinking it was a tram station.  The cleaner tells me that the train now leaves once a day at 3pm! I email the normally trusty RometoRio app with a pic of the new timetable, printed on a sheet of A4 paper.  So I have a day to spare in Alexandropoulos.  It's a nice City, built by the Russians , on a grid system, which I find really confusing.  I leave my big rucksack outside the unmanned Downtown hostel, and take my bikini, Indian sarong, and Turkish towel and head to the beach near the municipal campsite.  Me, and  all the town's young people  who have just broken up for the long summer holidays.  They are a respectful crowd, and I'm left alone to enjoy a couple of hours  on the beach before the train to Ormenio.  I have a picnic and the carriage to myself. The trainline runs up the Turkish border, and Vodafone send me a "welcome to Turkey!" SMS!  the cleaning lady tells me to jump down in the last town, it's a good job my data is working, and I don't get down until the last tumbleweed town of Ormenio.  I walk into town, and find the local bar.  I order a beer and a taxi.  They ask if I want the beer before the taxi!  Funny people!  If lost in Greece, always make your way to the local bar, and the  locals will be able to rustle you up whatever the traveller needs.  My taxi appears  15 minutes later, and I'm grateful that the driver will drive me across the border to Svilengrad the first town on the Bulgarian side for my last Euro25.  The border crossing  is fast and simple , 

the Greek policeman mutters under his breath. I don't catch it.  The Bulgarians ask me the purpose of my visit .  Tourism , I say.  I can't actually believe all this border infrastructure on the Greek/Bulgarian border, for two countries  which are both in the EU, but on the frontier with Turkey, and trying to stop all the refugees that we have created with our wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and now also Syria.  The driver drops me in Svilengrad bus station, and even though she has no English, I manage to learn that the next bus to Sunny beach is the next morning at 7:30, and I must pay in Levas ("livres" the french word for notes) . Svilengrad is a strange place, in one carpark lot there are not one, not two, but three casinos! In the former Soviet outpost! I get a gyros without meat, and a sour cherry juice.  I walk through the town, and stay at a guesthouse where the old lady has no English, just Russian, but we get through the check-in formalities, and she even makes me a cup of tea.  I take a shower, and head for bed at 9pm.  Another busy day!  I can't believe I was on the beach in Greece with the youth this am! 

Next morning I let myself out, and walk back to the bus station, where I get my ticket, and a couple of coffees from the machine.  This is my bus to Haskovo: 

In Haskovo I have 4 hours to kill.  It's a nice City.  I visit the local market and buy a kilo of cherries for a few leva.  Delicious.  I get talking to a nice man called  Pier (Peter) who sells coins, and is interested in my Afghani bag, decorated  with Afghani coins:

.  .

We talk about the history of Bulgaria, which was once under the Ottoman Empire, and he points me in the direction of the  Archeological museum, which I visit after a quick visit to the  German pharmacy DM chain, where I buy a few items of toiletry which I have been missing since India, namely hair dye! I spend an hour or so sketching  the beautiful mural  on the wall of the  museum, and I am  in awe  of these  Soviet artists who were very clever with the references they manage to include in their art: 

 

I head for my bus to Sunny beach, and even manage to get a Vegan lunch at the bus station: chips & ketchup!  The bus journey is uneventful (hurrah!) on the well made roads to Burgas and Sunny beach, a 45 minute journey up the coast.  I get to the bus station, and make the wrong decision to get in a taxi  to my  home for the next  10 days or so:  Perla apartments.  It costs more than 20 Levas to go just around the corner.  My host : Dan comes to meet me, and we drive around Sunny beach looking for an ATM that is not one those those yellow and blue rip-off Euro ATMs' . I get the cash to pay the rent for the week, and then head to a  supermarket  called  "Mladoff" to get groceries  for the week, also for around 20 Levas.  Bulgaria is so cheap, and the produce, the cherries, the apricots , the tomatoes are just delicious.  I am happy  to cook for myself, and clean the apartment on a daily basis somethings I haven't done for  6 months or so.  I cook delicious lentils , with Maggi blocks.  Pasta with fresh tomato sauce. Rice and peppers.  The Wifi in the apartments  is quite terrible dropping out every hour or so.  I still manage to gain 100 or more followers on Twitter this week of the Platinum Jubilee and over-indulgence in the  UK.  When this happens I head to the beach of the Black sea, which is pristine clean.  I wonder how they manage to get the   beach umbrellas

Sunny beach, it really is!

lined up in such neat rows!  So this  is how my 8 days or sea in Sunny beach on the  Black sea pan out : tea, coffee,too much Social media (Twitter!) trip to the supermarket & grocery shop,  cooking, trip to the beach.  Much as I like the beach , Sunny bech is a cultural dessert , with few churches, no Art galleries or museums. Nessebar next door is better for culture.  I try book my ticket from Sunny beach straight through to Belgrade, Serbia, where I hear the Wifi is much better, but I have to spend one night in Bulgaria's dilapidated capital, Sofia.  

So read in my next blog about my journey home through Eastern Europe: Sofia, Serbia, Slovenia onto Italy, Paris and home!