With the comfort of the hotel beds (beds, plural..) we slept through our early alarm and woke up at 8, just in time for our inclusive breakfast on the roof terrace. The full English fry up wasn't available, but there was plenty of melon and cheese. Once breakfast was consumed we checked out of the hotel, checked on the car and checked our watch. Just enough time to have a look around Istanbul in the daylight. We walked up through a bazaar to the blue mosque - well it might have been, there were people taking pictures. A few random street turns later we were back in the car. Because Europe is big we were behind schedule, so we plugged the border of Iran into the GPS and settled in for a long drive.

 

At least we planned a long drive, Turkish traffic had other plans. As soon as we left Istanbul we hit non-moving traffic. We edged our way towards Iran by 10 miles over 2 hours. Up ahead in the distance we could see a car with a roof rack and a stickers, a good sign that we were about to see our rally team for the day. As we pulled along side it turned out to be a Swiss couple with a couple of hitchhikers crammed in the back with their luggage. As we chatted in the queue of traffic information was passed on from the hitchhiker that his friend was a 100km further up the road in the same traffic jam - clearly we wouldn't be getting far today. After a few more hours of lane switching, jostling and horn honking we bought lunch from a man selling bread from a pole in the middle of the road. Despite being Ramadan he was doing a roaring trade, as were the little kids selling bottles of water. We ran into the Swiss team at a  petrol station, which had a distinct lack of petrol, their hitchhikers were complaining about space in the Swiss Suzuki - there would be even less in the back of our car..

If there's anything worse than a Turkish traffic jam it is Turkish traffic when the jam clears. At some point someone might have attempted to generate some sort of code for the highway, they then clearly got bored and chucked it away because no-one here has read them or gives a s*%t. Overtaking or undertaking are equally valid choices, if there is a space someone will attempt to fill it at 70mph. A fairly standard 3 lane highway could  also be a seen as a 7 lane highway if you include the hard shoulder and spaces between lanes - I'm not too sure why they even bothered painting lanes. One "rule" that all fast drivers will inform you about is if you are driving ridiculously fast and approaching a slower car, there is no need to slow down or change lanes. What you must do instead is carry on at the same speed flashing your high beams, and then proceed to climb into the slower vehicle's boot. We were made well aware of this "rule" by one particular road user who, doing well over 100mph, came barreling up behind us lights flashing. In order to get out his way we needed a space to do so. A simple problems like that doesn't dissuade Captain D%*k@#d, both turning around to shout at him turned out to be a bad idea when we looked forward to see red brake lights. Chris then pulled off the most Turkish manoeuvre imaginable, a three lane swerve through heavy traffic. He later told me he didn't even look, which I'm not too sure if I should be scared ot impressed.

 

It was well into darkness when we arrived in Ankara. Facing the fact that we were going to have a long drive tomorrow we tried to find a hotel. The first random hotel selected on the GPS was nonexistent, the second was a 5 star resort. To tired to be bothered moving on, we accepted the €110 price tag once we were told we would have access to a club lounge - the lounge contained unlimited free beer and food and was open 24/7 It was a good a reason as any to head back to our beautiful room - after all google tells us it'll take 17 hours to drive to Iran tomorrow...