Middle-aged flash packers

Tedious and long driving day today. We set off from Dalaman at around 7.30am and arrived in Eceabat at about 4.30pm. Lots of traffic due to the end of Bayram and the start of children’s holidays.

 Couldn’t have timed it better for the ferry – literally arrived at the terminal, queued for 10 mins and got straight on.

The Turkish driving idiosyncrasies are wearing thin. “Anticipation”, “thinking ahead” and “queuing” are obviously not words in the Turkish vocabulary. The number of times today someone tried to overtake us just before roadworks turned two lanes into one.

On the ferry, the jostling for position to be first off was ludicrous. Poor foot passengers had to dodge being run over. 

People wait until they are looking into the exhaust pipe of the car in front before overtaking – no indicators used of course. Terrible for Steve, he can’t just drive, he has to anticipate what some crazy, idiotic person is likely to do. As for me, I have to go into zen mode and not keep jumping out of my skin and swearing all the time. Grrrrr!
So sad about the bombing at Suruc. Idealistic young people, Kurds and Turkish, trying to work together for the benefits of others. Blown to bits by worthless scum. This isn’t to do with religion – all those young people were Muslim – it’s to do with evil people and good people, power versus humanity. 

We talked to a Turkish man who thought Erdogan (the nutty president of Turkey) was sympathetic to Isis, now demonstrators in Istanbul have made the same claim. Whatever the case, this will change things, but how sad that this tragedy happened.
On a lighter note, no pictures of our travels today so here’s one of the grapes on our vine – it’s been the most amazing crop. Shame we won’t get the benefit of them but I hope our gardener and neighbour enjoys them!

nice bunch of grapes!