National Day in Hungary - but no rest for me. I woke up, enjoying a wonderful view of the sea just outside my window.

View from my window

The breakfast was a bit of a joke, maybe it was due to the fact hat I was the only guest - or maybe as I had asked the receptionist not to stare at me. He had a bad news for me - which was that I had a flat tire...oh no, not again...

There was a petrol station next to the hotel, there I first tried to inflate the tire, but - bad start - I had a so-called Presta valve, it would not fit the pump and I did not have an adapter. So I started pumping my bike manually, I heard the air gushing out, some sort of nail had cut through both the tire and the tube. As mentioned before, I am not the most capable person for fixing this, but have managed to fix these issues relatively quickly, not this time. I suffered first at getting the tire off, then placing it on the wheel, then putting it back on: The scene at the hotel repeated itself, someone started staring at me, which made me somewhat nervous (it is quite obvious I do not like being stared at),. I told him to either stop staring or start helping, the latter he did. United, we were able to fix the issue, so it was only around 10 am that I had started my ride. Tesekür for the help!

So now I was biking on the shore of the Black Sea, which was actually quite pretty. The morning hours were rather bleak, but it would get nicer during the day.

Bike path

...however, the houses on right next to the sea were rather nondescript - in many places, there would be prime properties, here apparently that was not the case.

Rather dull houses line the shore

Outside the town of Bolaman, I had a choice to make - I could ride along the coast or cut through the land portion of a peninsula, the former being 15 kilometers longer, the latter having a long tunnel. I decided to put off the decision at a small restaurant close to the shore, I was the sole guest, however, there was a yummy smell, as someone had ordered a köfter sandwich to go a few minutes prior to my arrival. I ordered the same, with some ayran and a tea afterwards, quite yummy. I asked the restaurant owner about the tunnel, he calmed me and told me not to worry and gave his telephone number should I get into trouble. Then I wanted to pay, he said I was his guest - Tesekür, yet again!

Hoping it would not had been my last lunch, I started heading up the hill and saw something yellow in the sky, it was the sun, something I hadn´t seen for a while.

In contrast to the previous long tunnel, I decided to ride through this tunnel, it had fewer lorries and generally speaking, less traffic. I made it to the other side, where I got to a nice city called Ordu. In contrast to many other towns I had visited in Turkey, this town had a pretty center. There was even a cable-car hauling passengers to a nearby hill-top, but as the days were rather short, I decided against riding it.

When it started getting cold, I decided to lay my instrument aside, i.e. stop biking. In a very small town, called Piraziz, I found a very appealing hotel, with the funny name "Bless You!". It was one of the nicest hotels on my trip, everything worked well in my room,...let me please pate in my review from Google:.

"This hotel exceeded my expectations in all regards. I am traveling by bicycle and they made my stay very pleasant, catering for some special requests.

The room is in excellent condition, everything works well, attention was paid to many details. For example, there are ample plugs to charge electric devices. In many other hotels, the water in the shower is either not warm enough or it does not flow properly, here it was amazing hot water in a full stream. I also liked the glass door of the cupboards. There was free drinking water - not only still, but sparking. (the latter I really like). I wish some 5-star hotels were as nice as this place...The price/quality ratio is an excellent one."

No wonder they have a rating of 4.9. One more positive thing - after some haggling (we are in Turkey, after al), we agreed they would wash all my apparel during the night for a fair amount, which was around €20 - so half of the price quoted the previous day.

I was quite pleased with how things were shaping out, by that evening, I had just over 360 kilometers to go to Batumi and five full days left. On that day, I had ridden only about 95 kilometers (with time lost repairing the flat tire), but made 1,000 meters of elevation. Here is the map.