Breakfast was included, it started at 7:30 - and was not as good as I thought it would be - the highlight was the olive tapanade - otherwise, things were rather average. Oh well, could have been worse, like the dreadful place, called Gölcük Salay Hotel (I am/was quite shocked at how bad a place can be, as you can see...).

I left only after 8 am and now the Bosporus Channel was behind me, with a large town, called Izmit, ahead. I was a bit apprehensive, as the town (similar to many others) was built on a hill, with one high-rise building towering over the other, it looked very dense, very deep - but luckily, the road led past it. There was a mega traffic jam between my hotel and the town, I overtook literally hundreds of stranded cars.

Turkish bike paths - I was now riding on one relatively newly paved road and noticed there was a path for bikes on the opposite side of the road. Managing to cross the now free-flowing road, I was quite pleased with this - only to notice that about half a kilometer away, the bike path came to an abrupt end. Hmmm, it is what it is.

At first, the weather was like a lottery, there was sunshine ahead of me and rain clouds behind me and for the larger part of the day, I had some fair skies mixed with dark, grey clouds. initially, I was riding on a major highway, it eventually morphed into a regular two-lane road - and it started inclining, nothing all too steep, not too much traffic. Despite the not all too nice weather (now it was light drizzle), I was a happy fellow, I did like the scenery.

I reached a town called Sapanca, which is the door to the skiing resort Karpete. On the website, I found some interesting information, let me quote: "Skiing sport is a kind of sport that is done by using a long and flat tool with curved front and back called “Ski” and is aimed at moving forward over the snow and ice by skiing. It is thought that skiing first emerged when people used tree branches not to sink into the snow." I would have never known. Anyhow, there was a cable.-car gong to the mountain, to my surprise, it was in operation.

Nice alley in the town of Hendek

Outside town, a beautiful spectacle of nature amazed me, it was a full rainbow - one which I do not see all too often.

Drying my stuff

I rode about 115 kilometers that day (and got very wet) and had about 550 meters of elevation. Here is the map.