Bye bye Turkey, hello Bulgaria
Tackling Istanbul: how not to do it
The city of Istanbul is notorious among cyclists, as it’s busy, chaotic, loud and downright dangerous to ride a bike. So we had the brilliant idea to avoid the Asian part of town by cycling from the black sea coast (Karasu) to Yalova. Yalova is on the opposite side of the Sea of Marmara from Istanbul and this is also how we started our tour in Turkey. In this way we would be able to take a ferry to the European side of Istanbul; easy peasy, right? The only thing we didn’t think about is that to get to Yalova, we had to pass by Izmit. Which is also busy, chaotic and loud. We did the 160+ km from Karasu to Yalova in one day, arriving just before sunset, after cycling along busy highways (D605 and D130). The next day we took the ferry to Yenikapi in Istanbul, on the European side. Still tired from the day before, but hyped on adrenaline, we started off well, by following the cycling path along the water. That went all fine and dandy, until the cycling path stopped just before the bridge to Avcilar, and we tried to find our way west through residential areas. We knew that there is only one solid advice for cycling through Istanbul: “whatever you do: avoid the D100”. So naturally, we ended up on the D100. By this time, we were already so done with the traffic, that we decided to just bite the bullet and get it over with. The D100 it is! Completely exhausted we found a camping spot behind some factory halls just before Silivri, 20 km from the city. We made it out of Istanbul!
A modern-day caravanserai for cyclists
Our next goal was only 100 km away. We cycled the entire stretch with continuous rain (we didn’t care, we were out of Istanbul) to Lüleburgaz. Here you’ll find the bike acedemy, built in 2017 by the city of Lüleburgaz to promote cycling and functioning as a modern-day caravanserai for bike tourers. There are guest rooms, kitchen facilities, hot showers, a laundry machine and the most passionate host; İnanç.
The site rents out bikes for the local kids and there are tracks where they can practice, and all the tools you’ll need for bike maintenance. We highly recommend to stay here, plus it’s perfectly located between the Greek and Bulgarian borders and Istanbul. And it’s completely free! Just follow 1pedal365 on Instagram or find him on warmshowers.org and shoot him a message! We stayed for 5 nights, met the Dutch couple (again), hanged out with French and Swiss tourers. We got everything clean and Kevin even got a haircut. We are all set for our second country on this trip: Bulgaria!
Our stats so far
- 68 nights, of which 51 in the tent, 12 in a hotel and 5 at the bike acedemy
- 5176 km cycled! The shortest day was 14 km, the longest day was 167 km
- 7 resting days
- We cycled through 29 out of 81 provinces
- 3 punctures, 1 outer tire trashed, 8 sets of brake pads used up, 2 new chains
- 1 glove lost, 1 pair of shorts and sunglasses beyond repair. 1 sleeping mattress ruined (hooray for lifetime warranty)
- Our budget: 174 Euro for the flight tickets, 140 Euro for Corona testing before departure. We spent 281 Euro on hotels and 25 Euro for transport (train in Izmir and ferries). The SIM card costed 25 Euro initially and we spend 10 Euro for topping up. 80 Euro for bike spare parts. About 700 Euro cash, mostly for food. This makes the total up to now about 1410 Euro.
