I had retired early the day before, so I woke up early on this day and was on my saddle around 6:30 am, when it was still dark. I had two sub-100km days in a row, so I thought I would make up for this shame...;.-).

I had the the entire width of the D100 for me in the morning, there was hardly any traffic that early Sunday morning, and I was eating up those miles. Next to the road, I spotted ancient half-timbered houses _ these are characteristic for this region. Interesting - I had seen such houses on my bike ride in Normandy that summer.

Omelette for lunch

...and for dinner, sone skewers...

...skewers for dinner

Before sunset I noticed that a larger town was approaching with a place to stay, so I was headed for Grand Dost Hotel in Osmancik. As I got to the town, there was something remarkable about it, something I had not seen in Turkey (with the notable exception of Istanbul) - in the middle of the town was a hill and on this hill a beautifully lit castle. I got to my hotel, despite the name, nothing about it was grand. I learned that it is best practice is to go directly to the hotel, not pay for it in advance, for two reasons - one could negotiate a better deal at the reception - and if the place sucks (see that horrible establishment, Saral Hotel in Gölcük), one can just leave. For most of my hotels on this trip, I ended up paying between €25 and €30, including breakfast.

Even though I was quite tired, I wanted to see the castle, but the thought of riding up in the darkness to the top was not appealing, so I asked the reception to haul me a taxi. The reception did mention it might be closed, but according to Google, the caslte would have been open for another hour. I asked how much the trip there and back would cost, the reception quoted a price around €4 (about 150 Turkish Lira). The taxi driver was an old man who did not speak a word of English, before he started, I wanted to make sure we agree on the price - I dislike having to haggle afterwards. He seemed to agree.

We set off towards town and after five minutes, there was a gate, still at the foot of the castle and alas, it was closed. Apparently, there was another way up, also closed. So I asked to be driven back to the hotel, paid with a 200 banknote, of course he did not appear to have the change - but business is business, I waited as long as he paid back the money, after all, we were gone just for a few minutes. Well, the reception was indeed correct.

There was a restaurant opposite the hotel, where I had the skewers, considering it was by far not a large portion, the €11 price tag was rather high. In Austria, it would probably have cost a bit more, but would have been a fuller portion. Someone did mention that there is a Turkish menu and a "stupid tourist" menu, apparently, I had gotten the latter. It needs to be noted that in general, food was anything but inexpensive, see my lunch in Edirne.

Well, let the drums roll...on this day, I made 185 kilometers, the longest distance for quite a while (my record is 255 kilometer with two mountain passes, but that was about 20 years ago). There were 700 meters of altitude gain, but also 1,400 meters of descending - that explains my good performance. Here is the map.