As early as I dozed off, as keen was I to leave my windowless foxhole, which was called a "suite". So I was ready at 7 am, but not (yet) to leave Istanbul, just my room. I did have a mission, next to a bit of sightseeing, which was to find a laundry for my clothes - I do have eight sets of clean stuff, and this was the eighth day.

I did find a laundry, but it would open up only around 10 am, then I found the next one, same, now I can really use the "wash, rinse, repeat" idiom, but the fifth or so laundry was wide open, I believe it was a non-stop operation. One had to buy tokens for the machines and as luck would have it, someone left behind a whole a pretty nice amount of tokens, probably they had purchased it, but did not need them. So with my clothes in the machine, I did a bit of sight-seeing in the Taskim area.

On the Marmaray

Someone had recommended I should rather ride on the southern side of the channel, as it had less traffic - and I heard there would be a ferry crossing. After some searching, I did find the ferry, which would take me to the other side of the channel. For those without the power of imagination and/or no geographical knowledge, I made a sketch of my movements - in red, is the trip by Marmaray, with green, the ferry.

Red is the Marmaray, green is the ferry

The ferry ride was a pleasant one, took about 30 minutes, a member of the crew spoke quite good English and he told about the surroundings and he even treated me to a Turkish tea, tesekür! There were a lot of trucks on the ferry, when I asked why, the reasoning was crystal clear - the price to cross the neighboring bridge, called Osman Gazi (built in 2013) was well over €10, while the ferry costs around €7 for trucks (for me, itwas around €1 or so).

Gölcük seafront (with a ferry)

Even from the far, I did not like Gölcük Saral Hotel, it looked dreadful, squeezed between buildings. Until then, I generally had a positive impression of Turkish people, well, not here. I entered the hotel, quite tired, and an extremely unfriendly receptionist greeted me (greeted me not, to be more precise), I thought I had paid the reservation online, he claimed I had not. Even though it turned out he was right, the rude manner he communicated with me, almost shouting and demanding that I pay through him (I preferred to pay online with my credit card), I have never experienced such improper behavior. Luckily, my reservation was one that one could cancel, and when he gave me a "forehead flick", I left immediately, back into the dark night. No wonder the rating of this hotel is around 3.2 (out of 5) - probably one of the lowest I have seen in a while.

I looked for another place and found a very pleasant 4-star hotel for around €40, so €10 per star, I would guess. It was yet another 7 kilometers away, in the cool, dark evening, but it turned out to be a good investment. On the way to the hotel, I saw a large frog (or toad) crossing the road.

Laege amphibian thing

The hotel was quite a different experience than in that sh*thole of a place called Gölcük Saral Hotel, forgive my Spanish. I checked in around 8 pm and had one hour to take benefit of the sauna, the steam bath and the Turkish hammam, after which I occupied my spacious bed and fell asleep.

Biking that day was a mere 45 kilometers, I had ridden next to the shore, so no elevation...Here is the map.