We’ve Reached our Final Destination of Istanbul, After the Most Challenging Day of the Entire Trip

Friday, September 20, was the last cycling day of our trip. Our ride began in Silivri, 50 miles from Istanbul. We had originally planned to cycle 30 miles, then take a ferry the last 20 miles into Istanbul, instead of trying to bike through the dense urban area. However, emboldened by our success in making it through difficult stretches on our trip so far, we decided on Thursday evening to revamp Friday’s route in order to bike the full 50 miles into Istanbul. We succeeded, and are glad that we changed our plans, but the day was the most difficult of our whole 5-week trip. We had to weave through small towns, make it up a climb that was steeper than any we had encountered previously, and occasionally ride in heavy traffic.

Our first stop in Istanbul was a photo-op at the old train station where the original Orient Express train route ended. We parked our bikes in front of an Orient Express sign in the station and had someone take our picture (after explaining, via Google Translate, that we had biked from Paris following the old train route closely). Our cycling then ended a half mile from the train station, but our exertions were far from over at that point, since we had to push our bikes (with saddlebags) up a very steep cobblestone alley to get to the bike store that had agreed to dismantle and box our bikes. After leaving the bicycle store, we then carried our heavy saddlebags a half mile up steep streets to reach our hotel.

Right across the street from our hotel is the Pera Palace Hotel, the luxury hotel built to accommodate the Orient Express passengers before or after their train ride. It was built from 1892-5 for the purpose of hosting the Orient Express passengers, and is referred to as "the oldest European hotel of Turkey". The Pera Palace was the first building in Turkey to be powered by electricity, other than the Ottoman Palaces. It was also the only hotel in the city to provide hot running water for its guests and was home to the first electric elevator in Istanbul.

We would have stayed at the Pera Palace for our two nights in Istanbul, but decided that the minimum nightly rate of about $500 was too steep. Despite not staying in the hotel, we did have dinner there. The hotel has two dining options, the Orient Terrace and the Agatha Restaurant (“inspired by the mystery and romance of Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express”, according to the hotel website). We chose to eat at the former.

One of our discussion topics at dinner was how this bike trip compared to our prior long cycling trips: 3-months across the US in 2010 and 5-week trips from London to Saint Petersburg in 2011, in Japan in 2012, and through Scandinavia in 2013. While it takes some time after each trip until our thoughts about it gel, one initial thought is that this trip had the worst cycling (especially in Romania and Bulgaria, where we had to deal with trucks, sand, potholes, and dogs) but was the greatest adventure.

On the way into Istanbul: the walls of the old city

On the way into Istanbul: in heavy traffic

On the way into Istanbul: Europe on the left, Asia on the right

The train station at the end of the Orient Express route (the front is being worked on)

In the train station

Pushing the bike up a steep alley to the bike shop

At the bike shop, where they'll box our bikes. The work has to be done on the street, since the shop is tiny.

Lugging our baggage uphill to our hotel

The Pera Palace Hotel, where the Orient Express passengers stayed

Dinner at the Orient Lounge, in the Pera Palace Hotel

Our Last Stop Prior to Istanbul: An Exquisite Hotel in a Resort Town on the Sea of Marmara

Our 58-mile ride today (Friday 9/19) took us to the town of Silivri, a resort town on the Sea of Marmara 40 miles west of Istanbul. The Sea of Marmara is an inland sea bordered entirely by Turkey, connecting to the Black Sea through the Bosphorus Strait and to the Aegean Sea through the Dardanelles Strait.

Silivri was founded by the Greeks, became part of the Ottoman Empire in the 1300s, then changed hands a number of times before finally coming under Turkish rule in 1922. The city had its heyday as a summer resort in the 1960’s and 1970’s, but its appeal declined in the 1980’s and 1990’s due to pollution of the Sea of Marmara. Recently, efforts have been made to clean it up.

On reaching Silivri, we located our hotel, which has traditional Ottoman architecture and interior design, and modern well-appointed rooms. After checking in, we strolled through the town center and continued on to the nearby harbor. The harbor is full of pleasure boats, as well as fish restaurants that are adjacent to fish markets, so that you choose the fish that you want from the market and then they cook it for you. We had dinner at one of the restaurants, followed by dessert at an upscale pastry shop.

On our way to Silivri

Roadside fruit markets

We reached the Sea of Marmara

Cycling into Silivri

The Silivri harbor

Selection of fish to eat

The waiter advises you on the fish choices

Outdoor dining at the fish restaurant

Dessert at a fine pastry shop

An Up-and-Down Day to the Middle of Nowhere

When we reserve lodging, which we do via online booking well in advance of our bike trips, we always try to stay in hotels in or near town centers. Once we arrive at our destination each day, we check into the hotel, take showers, and then wander around town to see the sights and eat. Today’s hotel, over a mile from our destination town of Luleburgaz, was the only exception to our rule of staying in town centers, because we couldn’t find a hotel in the town.

Each evening during the trip, we review the next day’s ride, looking at the length, total climb, route profile, and potential snack and lunch breaks. We also check the weather forecast, including temperature, probability of rain, and wind speed and direction. We knew that we were in for a ride today that was constantly up and down, never level, when we saw the route profile (see below), and that we would be buffeted by strong cross-winds from our left.

The 47-mile ride today was enjoyable, but did conform to the challenging hill and wind conditions that we expected. Our destination hotel is a little strange, in that it’s a large place with over 100 rooms, numerous employees, and expansive grounds, but there are almost no others guests staying here. We arrived in time for lunch at the hotel and sat alone in the dining room large enough to seat a couple of hundred guests. Then, with nowhere to go, we spent the rest of our time on our computers, doing work and other tasks.

Leaving Edirne this morning

Our route profile today

One of the many climbs on our ride

One of Carol's jobs when we ride is protection from dogs, but she went above and beyond the call of duty here

Our destination hotel

The hotel dining room, after we finished dinner

Crossing Into Turkey: Another Country, Another World

At mile 41 of our 68-mile ride today (Wednesday 9/17), we crossed the border from Bulgaria into Turkey. The daylong bike ride was fantastic: rolling hills with excellent views, a strong tailwind, very little traffic, and only a couple of annoying dogs.

The change from Romania and Bulgaria to Turkey was dramatic. In the former two countries, the countryside was full of trash and decaying buildings, and the small-to-medium sized towns had crumbling old buildings and Communist-era large apartment blocks that must have been horrendous when new and are now falling apart. Food was hard to find and of poor quality. There was little activity on the streets, and there were few stores (often closed) with meager merchandise.

As soon as we crossed into Turkey, things changed markedly. The road was well paved and had a very wide shoulder (an important feature when biking), and we had a tasty, nutritious lunch at a roadside restaurant. When we arrived at our destination town of Edirne, the architecture was totally different from what we had been seeing for the past 10 days: interesting buildings in fairly good shape, mosques everywhere, and no bland concrete apartment hulks. But the most striking difference was that the streets were alive, crowded with people and full of bustling stores and restaurants.

Edirne is a city of 150,000 that is close to the border with Greece (4 miles) and Bulgaria (12 miles). It has a long and varied history. The building of the city is described in Greek mythology, and it was subsequently re-founded (or founded) by the Roman emperor Hadrian and named Hadrianopolis. Since then, it has changed hands numerous times, belonging at various times to Greece, Bulgaria, Russia, and the Ottomans. It served as the third capital of Ottoman Empire 1365-1453, before Constantinople became final capital. The area around Edirne has been the site of no fewer than 16 major battles or sieges, and a military historian identifies the region as "the most contested spot on the globe"

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The city is a thriving center of commerce for woven textiles, silks, carpets and agricultural products. Among its many mosques is the notable Selimiye Mosque, built in 1575 and considered to be one of the highest achievements of Islamic architecture. It was included on UNESCO's World Heritage List in 2011. The dome of the building had the largest diameter of all domes in the world for several centuries, and its four tall minarets are the second highest in the world.

Shacks in the Bulgarian countryside

A ominous road sign as we biked in Bulgaria this morning: ? bears, ? terrorists. It didn't stop us, and we soon found that it was referring to a sharp curve in the road.

Entering Turkey

Riding on a wide shoulder in Turkey

Selimiye Mosque, with the second tallest minarets in the world

Inside the mosque, looking up at the dome

Street scene in Edirne

Dinner in Edirne

A Four Hour Bus Ride over the Balkan Mountains in Bulgaria

When we put together the itinerary for our Paris-to-Istanbul bike ride, we realized that the total distance of 1900 miles was a little too much for us to cycle in the 5 weeks that we had budgeted for the trip. So we scheduled two train rides and one bus ride during the trip, totaling about 250 miles. Today was the last of these segments, a 4-hour, 100-mile bus ride over the Balkan Mountains from Razgrad to Yambol, Bulgaria. The ride, and the bus stations along the way, were far from first class, but the bus driver and passengers were friendly and helpful.

Most of the towns we’ve seen in Romania and Bulgaria, other than the fairly large ones, have been in bad shape and without niceties such as picturesque squares in the town centers. On top of that, the food has generally been poor to mediocre, and we often have to buy food from supermarkets because we can’t find restaurants. Peter, a bread and pastry lover, has suffered through tasteless, stale bread and unappealing pastry in these two countries. More than balancing that, however, has been great weather for biking and wonderful company (each other).

Waiting to load our bikes and baggage on the bus

With a new "friend"; Peter's bike is on the back seat of the bus

On the way

We each used the bathroom in a bus station halfway through the ride. Guess who had the better experience.

Around the corner from our hotel in today's destination town of Yambol

Not exactly a traditional Bulgarian restaurant, but at least we found a place that served food in Yambol. We rated the food as so-so, one of the higher ratings we've given in Romania and Bulgaria

Bicycle Routing and Navigating Via Smartphone GPS

We had originally plotted our route today to be on small roads in the Bulgarian countryside. However, chastened by our experience over the past two days cycling on similar roads in Romania, when we had to deal with horrible road surfaces and numerous stray dogs, we decided to revise our route today to take E70, the main north-south road in this part of Bulgaria. Better to fend with trucks than potholes, dirt roads, and dogs.

It was a good choice, especially since the traffic was fairly light and the trucks gave us quite a lot of breathing room when passing. Our decision was further justified when we departed from E70 two miles before the end of our ride in order to get to our hotel, and we immediately came upon not only a dog but a few cows wandering on the road.

We do all of our routing and hotel reservations months in advance of the start of the trip, though we often modify the routes based on information we learn once the trip starts (such as the poor quality of secondary roads in Romania and Bulgaria). For this year’s trip, Peter switched to routing and navigating using a smartphone instead of a dedicated Garmin GPS unit. The main reason for the change was the limited nature of Garmin maps outside of major Western countries, with poor coverage of roads in Romania, Bulgaria, and Turkey. In all of these places, the Garmin maps included only a few of the roads. A secondary reason for changing to smartphone navigation was the small, poorly illuminated screen on our Garmin units.

Routing and navigating via a smartphone on an international bicycle trip is quite a bit more complicated than doing the same on a car ride in the United States, where you can put the phone on a dashboard holder, plug it in, and pull up Google maps (or one of its competitors). The problems, which we solved by extensive research as well as trial and error in the months prior to our trip, are the following:

1. Online routing does not work internationally, both because internet data access is often unavailable in the countryside and is expensive when available. We solved this via:

(a) Open Street Maps (OSM) and OSMand: OSM is a collection of free, open-access maps of almost all countries in the world (analogous to Wikipedia for mapping) and OSMand is an Android program that navigates along OSM maps. The maps can be downloaded to the phone, so are available and routable even when offline. [Sorry, iPhone users. Steve Jobs was a control freak, so the iPhone doesn't allow open-source apps like OSMand.]

(b) RideWithGPS.com: This is an online website that allows you to create routes on your computer and then download them to the phone, permitting offline navigation.

2. Battery life: We keep our displays on constantly while cycling so as not to miss turns. The display on any phone is a heavy user of the battery, and we found that the standard Samsung S4 battery died after about 35 miles of cycling. Solution: Replace the original phone battery with a double-capacity battery, and also carry an external battery that can recharge the phone en route when needed.

3. Attaching the phone to bicycle handlebars in a way that is reliable, leaves the phone visible, and provides protection from rain: We purchased a phone handlebar holder in the US, but it cracked a few days into the trip, so we replaced it with a better one in Germany. It’s important to avoid holders that put the phone in a see-through plastic bag, since that limits visibility. Instead, a separate bag meant for protecting a phone from rain can be purchased, to be used only on rainy days.

Phone in its handlebar holder, running OSMand. We added the hair elastic to provide extra security to prevent the phone from falling out on bumpy roads.

View of the handlebar holder from the side. Also visible is the bulging blue back of the phone, which is designed to hold the double size battery for extra power.

The phone in its "rain jacket". Fortunately, we've only had two rainy days on our trip so far, so the rain cover has almost always been packed away.

External battery pack, with micro-USB connector for phone

The external battery sits in the small black case just below the phone, in case it is needed on a long ride

It was the first day of school in Ruse as we were heading out on our ride this morning, and all of the students had flowers for their teachers

Cows wandering along the road, about 1.5 miles from our destination hotel in Razgrad, Bulgaria

The street in front of our hotel in Razgrad

A Challenging Ride From Romania into Bulgaria

Our 60-mile ride today (Sunday, September 14) began in Bucharest, Romania. The ride ended just across the Bulgarian border in the town of Ruse (written as Pyce in Bulgarian, which uses the Cyrillic alphabet, similar to that used for the Russian language).

As we cycled through southeastern Romania today, we encountered a large number of Roma ("Gypsies"), often traveling in horse-drawn carts. There are an estimated 12 million Roma worldwide, with the largest concentrations in Central and Eastern Europe. Romania and Bulgaria are at or near the top of all countries in terms of Roma as a percent of the population, with an estimated 8-10% of the people in these two countries being Roma. There are also significant numbers in Spain, southern France, and other European countries, and approximately 1 million in the United States.

Based on linguistic and genetic evidence, the Roma emigrated to Europe from India about 1000 years ago. In general, they live on the fringes of society, with high rates of poverty and poor education. In several European cities, Roma pickpocketers are abundant. There is widespread discrimination against the Roma, and during WWII a large number (by some estimates, about 1 million) were exterminated by the Nazis.

The main challenge on our ride today was the horrible state of many of the roads we encountered. We not only found ourselves on a number of dirt roads, but some of the paved roads were so full of potholes that weaving around them was worse than riding on dirt.

Our destination town of Ruse turned out to be a very pleasant ending to the day. It is a city of 150,000 (fifth largest in Bulgaria), with several walking streets full of restaurants and cafes. There are beautiful fountains and gardens in and near the town center. Ruse lies on the Danube and is the largest river port of Bulgaria. It was most the most populous city in Bulgaria in 1880, and intensive building around that time changed the city's architectural appearance to a typical Central European one. It is known for its 19th- and 20th-century Neo-Baroque and Neo-Rococo architecture, for which it has been called “Little Vienna”, and results in its attracting a large number of tourists.

Scenes from our ride today:

Leaving Bucharest

A horribly rutted road

"Republic of Bulgaria"


Pictures in Ruse, Bulgaria, today's destination town: