Greece Customs

Arrived in Athens and quickly found a reasonably priced hotel and dumped our gear and headed for a well earned drink, to be followed by a meal.   Athens is a wonderful city, but a city of boarded up shops.  Sunday was spent looking around and climbing to the Acropolis to see how the renovations are coming along.

Next day we head down to Pireas to the shipping agent in hope that our bikes may be ready for collection.     No such luck, but 'come back tomorrow and they may be ready'.   Next day picked up the paperwork and grabbed a taxi out to the Customs Office. After being bounced between 6 different staff, finally a guy took pity and started to assist but said it would be near to impossible to get our bikes as the next day was May 1 and a public holiday, so we may have to return on Thursday.  He then bounced us again and I told her that the bikes didn't need an inspection because they were on carnets and the slow process started again.  Lots of rubber stamps and off to the bond store to collect and assemble the bikes in the heat of the day.   It was too late and we were to tired to leave athens that night, so back to the reasonally priced hotel.

Next morning left Athens with fully loaded bikes (see above) and headed north towards Thesolonika and then to the first beachside village/town we could find.  After about 8 hours on the road and covering around 600km we once again found some cheap digs and headed of for a drink and feed by the beach.

Next day was a similar distance to Istanbul.  The first few hours were great. Air was cool and the sun bright.  Crossing into Turkey was pretty painless, only about an hour and a half and we rode into the fisrt Turkish village for our first fabulous Turkish meal.  The first of many.    From that point it turned nasty.  First a 20 knot head and side wind that had us leaning our bikes into it. Hard work for us and the bikes.   When we were about 20km out of central Istanbul the traffic came to a halt and became stop start for the next 2 or more hours.   

We located the hostel and lugged all our gear up the stairs.  A good meal and early to bed. Next morning we walked around doing some 'housework'. Had to get my pannier bag stitched where I caught it up on a stell post while trying to ride down a footpath to save time.  Looking for the correct batteries for my spottracker so I can get it going and some other mechanical stuff.