The Ottoman Connection

We rolled into İzmir at 7am, bleary-eyed off a sleeper bus from Cappadocia. The driver was clearly on a schedule — we got shooed off almost before we'd stopped, bikes dumped on the pavement behind us.

So there we were, rebuilding bikes in the middle of a pedestrian-hostile bus terminal, when a local named Aşkin wandered over with cookies and just... stayed to watch us work. He designed and installed shade systems for cafés, had great style, and ended up walking us out of the terminal himself. I started calling him our guru. Funny how the best parts of a trip are always the five minutes you didn't plan for.

Getting Back on Track

The plan for this stage was simple on paper: ride from İzmir to the port town of Çeşme, ferry across to the Greek island of Chios, then on to Athens. Before any of that, though, we had a logistics problem — Maia needed a new bike, having handed back the mountain bike she'd been renting. She caught a bus into town to sort it out while Rennie and I met her at the shop. No drama, bike acquired, ferry caught, back on track toward Çeşme.

I was nervous going into our first big day of road riding as a group. Thankfully the highway sections were short, the sunset views were gorgeous, and everyone handled it better than I'd braced for. We camped that night next to a row of local bee boxes.

Riding Outside the Tourist Trail

Turkey got intense once we left the established Eurovelo routes — it didn't take much to end up on a motorway with no shoulder. The drivers were courteous enough, just always in a hurry. What made up for it was the coastline: we hugged the sea for most of this stretch, and every stop seemed to come with a view and a massive plate of kebab.

It wasn't an easy ride, either. Turkey in summer is hot and humid, and most of the route had zero shade, which meant long, brutal stretches with nowhere to hide from the sun. Hydration breaks became the thing that got us through. On our last day we started riding from the beach at 4:30am specifically to beat the heat, and it worked — we made great progress and reached the ferry with time to spare, a relief given how differently the days had been going compared to what I'd mapped out on paper.

This stretch was also where I really started to understand our pace as a group. Maia was the wildcard — I genuinely wasn't sure how hard I could push her to hit our timing goals. We had a few mishaps: she cut her foot in the ocean, then cut her leg on some scrap metal badly enough to need stitches. She rallied every time, and I'm proud of how far she came on that bike.

One detour was worth every extra kilometer: toward the end of day two, chasing a nicer campsite, we turned south toward the beach town of Altınköy. We got rewarded with one of the best sunsets of the trip, ocean views from camp, and a proper bit of beach time. Completely out of the way. Completely worth it.

Our final day in Turkey was a long push from that beachside camp to Çeşme. Maia's endurance really stood out that day. Closer to town we hit one of Turkey's "mega beaches" — white sand, packed with tourists, and an Adana kebab that might be the best thing I ate on the whole trip.

From there we rushed to the ferry and barely made it, about an hour to spare, which mattered since it only runs once a day. That ferry took us to the Greek island of Chios, and an overnight ferry from there carried us on to Athens, where we holed up in a hostel for two days to properly recover.

Athens also marked a turning point for the group — Maia had personal matters to attend to and headed off from here, so the trip continued on a smaller crew from that point forward.

What Turkey Left Me With

Looking back, what stands out most about Turkey is the people — genuinely some of the friendliest I've met on the road — and the food. My favorite dish, hands down, was the Adana kebab, chased with more Cappy fruit nectar than I'd like to admit. I had a feeling I wouldn't find nearly as many spices once we crossed into the Balkans, and I was right.

I'd have loved more time here, but the trip's timeline and the season didn't leave much room to linger comfortably on a bike. I'll be back for a proper, unhurried look at the country at some point.

One small thing I'm proud of: I spent two or three weeks before the trip working through Language Transfer's Turkish audio course, and it paid off more than I expected.

We managed real, if basic, conversations with locals, and people genuinely lit up when they realized I was trying. I think this is going to become a habit on future bike trips — not just picking up survival phrases, but actually digging into how the language is structured.

I get why Sally always loved learning languages so much now — there's something special about watching someone's face change when you make the effort.