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Today was, as the title says, a sea day. We spent the day on a Turkish boat, cruising for a short time around Kaleüçağız. Yep, take notes, there’ll be a test on that one later. It’s a beautiful seaside village with a rather large marina full of tourist and traveller boats.

On the way, we were treated to a spectacular view of Kaş from a lookout a few stories above it. Erkan described it as the place he fell in love with the city, and I certainly understand why. Also, mad props to the best hotel for advertising :)

If the status quo was the best idea we’d still be nomads scratching in the dirt for grubs. Or we’d still be bacteria.

A piece of paper which was designed on a computer and printed by a giant automated printer, then folded by robots and inserted into an envelope, again, by robots, was sent to your house. A person will have put it in your letter box, and you or your partner would have taken it into your house, a place built by men and women out of parts suffused with centuries of improvement. You can read it today by sunlight or moonlight or by the magic of electricity or even fire. All wonderful things we couldn’t live without that required people to work together and accept new things. That’s how you’re picking up that pen or pencil, to make a mark on that piece of paper, that helps our society decide if we believe in this thing that means so much to so many on both sides of the discussion.

Another early morning on the road, having had a terrible night’s sleep due to misbehaving air conditioning in the hotel. I know, privileged much? It’s alright if you know it’s going to be hot, you’ll get a fan or change how you sleep - but alternating between 21 and 30 degrees in the room was no fun at all.

First stop this morning was the Saklikent carpet weaver’s collective. A group brought together with government and other funding to promote the ancient skills of knot-work carpet weaving. They work in wool, silk and cotton to make some truly spectacular pieces of art. One of the pieces I saw today has a knot count of over 440dpi, which is incredible to see in real life.

Today we started heading towards the south-western corner of Turkey and the coastal town of Fethiye. We had a few hours’ drive ahead of us so along the way we heard a few new facts.

Roughly 65% of the Turkish population is under 35, with roughly a quarter of the 80 million residents being in school at any given time. One university entrance exam is held per year, run by the government, and if you miss it or fail it, then your life’s on hold for another year. About 2.5 million people are going for the 250k available university positions, so competition’s tough.

Today we started our third day in Selçuk with another delicious breakfast of local olives, eggs and other great things. I could really get used to this. An early start was on the cards due to the long transit, so we got our butts in gear and headed up to the Basilica of St. John the Evangelist and Ayasuluk Kalesi.

More crumblies, beautiful views and a warm day. Emphasis on the warm. It’s interesting to try and infer the designs of places based on their remaining ruins, and see how people put things together in the world’s largest incomplete 3d puzzle games.

I know the number of photos doesn’t really indicate how big of a day I’ve had, but given I’m not a Chinese tourist, it’s not a bad indication… today’s total from both devices was…

… 1003 photos. Dang. No wonder my Sony HX90 was nearly flat and I’d done a good job on the portable pack keeping my iPhone alive.

Only 88 of those were on the iPhone, so the Sony has been doing a great job so far. It’s up to 2993 photos stored and about 50 deleted since I left Brisbane 12 days ago.

Today was scheduled to be a long day of travel, and it definitely lived up to it. Starting in our accommodation, the ANZAC hotel in Çanukkale, we aimed to get to Selçuk by late afternoon, including a stop at the ruins of the city of Troia. Google maps says it’s five and a half hours, but that doesn’t include traffic in Izmir nor the stops along the way.

Today was the first full day on the road with the tour group, all of us piling into the van at early o’clock and starting our journey to the monuments of the Gallipoli campaign.

A few things we learnt on the way out, before the scenery started…

Istanbul’s a city of 17 million people and 4 million cars, thankfully we were going in the “outbound” direction this morning so traffic wasn’t terrible. We’re traffic going the other direction, I have a feeling we may still be there. It was surprising to me that it seems that people just hang out on the side of highways, waiting for lifts. There were literally hundreds of people as we left the city, just hanging out, looking like they were ready for work.

Realising that breakfast was part of the hotel stay really made my morning. Procuring that which sustains me was a little bit concerning after last night’s adventure, and I really wasn’t looking forward to stumbling out into the street, half asleep looking for food.

We weren’t due to meet up with the tour until 1300 today, so we went back to Gülhane park for a wander and to explore more of the space. What a lovely area - beautiful parkways and even thought it’s clearly all due to be replanted soon - the gardens are lovely. We got our first good look (on foot) of the “new city” across the bay; it’s truly amazing how many people clearly live in this area, the gateway between Europe and Asia.

Transit day, our flight was due to leave at 10:15am, so to get there in time we were up before 0600.

Caught the train from Covent Garden to Green Park, transferred to the Victoria line down to London Victoria station. From there it was a rather pleasant journey on the Gatwick Express to the airport.

Victoria station is a bit of a mess, there’s construction around a large section of the outside and GPS doesn’t work so you can’t find where you are until you do half a lap.