Took a wander round the city today, took a tourist bus a great way to see the place. What amazed me was the change in the place granted the last time I was here was 30 years ago it's like a different city, no open sewers, no smells, no starving peasants in fact a modern thriving cosmopolitan city. If the rest of Turkey is like this it'll be an amazing place.

Velico to Instanbul A long but fun day. Where to start as we left Velico we discovered the main road out of the country was closed and none of us had maps..brilliant. So after much umming and arring we found our way round to another route that took us through a small town called Simonograd which, I discovered, has the flashest speed camera equipment I've ever seen. It's mounted in the police car and automatically tracked me round a bend registering my speed the ...