Wednesday, October 3

Turkey-Iran, Day Eight: Hitting The Road

Road trips always have the potential to be fun, which is why the idea of driving back up to Istanbul gained traction. On paper it would always be a rushed trip, with more time spent on the road than off, but we were all confident that the pros would outweigh the cons. Having said that, we were flying quite blind, and didn't, for example, even know where we were going to sleep this night.

Despite our best efforts we left Kas pretty late in the morning as we bid our farewells to other members of the group. Once that was done we finally hit the road, the aim being to reach Ephesus before it got dark.

On the way we made some quick stops in Plaj, Xanthos and Yatagan, but these were very quick as we realised exactly how much time was against us. Being stopped at a police checkpoint didn't help in matters, but once our status as tourists (as opposed to, I dunno, illegal immigrants) was confirmed we were put on our way.

We managed to get a good 90 mins of decent light at Ephesus, which to be frank was just about enough. The ruins were pretty decent and well maintained, and gave a good idea of what the ancient city once looked like. It was quite the sight, and I'm glad we managed to get there to see it.


After some debate we all settled on Izmir as a place to stay overnight. Despite warnings about the place from others, Izmir turned out to be actually very cool and offered a decent enough vibe at the time of day we happened to arrive. And of course since we didn't have a plan per se we went for a local midnight hammam followed by 1am snacks and a walk along the seafront. It was one of those carefree moments where plans and organisation didn't matter, and was exactly what I wanted from this road trip of ours.

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