A week after starting the rally we have beaten Europe, Asia had better be trembling with fear because it's next on our list. 

Waking up on Jupiter after a night out would be a problem for most people, what with its lack of breathable air. For us it wasn't too bad, we just got back in the car and kept moving towards the Bulgarian border. The Bulgarian border followed the same procedure as the Romanian: let a man read your name then precede to be shouted at by a person in a shed. The shed part differed from before, this time we needed a plastic card for something. After the ceremonial shouting, he gestured for me to write something on a peice of paper. I took a guess that he didn't want me to scribe the entire works of Shakespeare, so I wrote my name and the number plate. Shed man then crossed it out, walked outside and wrote down our number plate again. We were €5 out of pocket, but we did have a piece of plastic...

 

A Bulgarian friend of mine is from Varna, so we decided to park up and have a wonder around. Varna is a city on the coast by the Black Sea so it made sense to head down to the beach. The sea wasn't black at all, if anything I'd describe it as more of a deep sea blue. The beach seems to have a very loose policy regarding beach attire, which the older generation were taking full advantage of. To verify arriving at a new sea, we touched it - the sea not anything attached to a semi-naked old person. 

 

Back on the road we headed down to the Turkish border to make our first real border crossing. Border crossing seems to be split into two parts, first you leave one country then you enter the other. Leaving Bulgaria was easy enough, we stopped at customs and two men came out to look at the car. The first wanted wasn't to cheery and wanted to look in the boot, I showed the second our inflatable GPS and tried to explain what we were doing. He laughed and told the grumpy man to close the boot. At the next stop we gave a woman the plastic, whether that's what she wanted or not that's what she got. We reached the Turkish side of the border and proudly presented our passports, only to be told we need 3 stamps. The hunt was on! After making a U-turn on the border we went back to a building we'd dismissed as unimportant and set about finding these elusive stamps. The desk with a sign saying "Vehicle Customs" and a queue was a sure bet. After reaching the desk we presented our passports and vehicle documents. After he looked them over and started typing in details, then he asked for our green card. We replied by staring at him blankly, he responded by tossing all our documents back at us and pointing at the door. Third lesson learnt: Important border s#*t is always located in a shed.  With the greed card in hand, an insurance document which is in no way green or card like, we got back in the queue for the customs. Questions were asked, documents were tossed, and directions were pointed. It seems the custom stamp must come after the police stamp, so we went and got ourselves a police stamp (1 down , 2 to go). The grumpy customs man was now happy, even if his face didn't show it, and gave us a customs stamp (2 down, 1 to go). The mystery stamp was given by a man in uniform standing in the car park - which is obviously where you would expect to find a important stamps. With stamps complete we mossied on into Turkey.

 

The first road in Turkey was a fantastic road - three lanes wide  with sunny Turkish landscape and not a sole around. We took a pit stop so Chris could release his bladder all over the Turkey, while stopped I found a CD of Italian music lying in the verge; one man's trash is another man's treasure, so I dusted it off and popped it in the car. We listened to the CD as we headed towards Istanbul. I'm not to sure whether the previous owner threw it out their window on purpose or by accident, but they should have kept hold of it - I'm looking forward to whatever the next roadside CD has in store. 

 

As always we hit rush hour traffic and arrived in Istanbul - staying in a hotel picked at random, giving us a chance to see some of the city before we hit the road tomorrow - this meant it was dark when we arrived in the city. Driving in Turkey is no easy feat while its light, its terrifying at night. Vehicles and people drive at whatever speed and wherever they like, while traffic signals are treated as optional. In the old city centre we found a "car park" (aka a gravel area next to a man's house), as we pulled in we were greated by a man who instructed us to park as close ad possible next to his window. Statistified that the car was safe we found our hotel and headed out for dinner and a pint or two.