Samsun, Turkey

We took the early shuttle from the hotel to tour the Grand Bazzar and do some of our best bartering, and barter we did. There was quite the assortment of stuff from quite nice antiques, through clothes and all sorts of trinkets. Mid afternoon we headed back to the hotel, picked up the car and, after an appropriate number of U turns and back tracks, caught the road heading east out of Istanbul. Third day on the E80. We were thinking about camping in a field a few hours outside of Istanbul, but Chris got in the zone behind the wheel and kept driving for about 11 hours till we arrived in Samsun, on the Black Sea coast, at 2am. We found what seemed to be an appropriate field just up off the side of the highway so we pitched the tents and called it a day. We woke up early in the morning because we were swimming in sweat. It must have been 30 degrees by 7am. Also we noticed that Chris had parked us in a corn/pistachio field - not a very good one, but a farmers field none the less. As we were packing a man from the adjacent house, who we can only assume owned the field, walked over, said what we assume was hello (smile on his face) and walked away. We are getting better vibes from the Turks than anywhere else since we left Chris and Barb‘s house. Due to the heat, and feeling uncomfortable sitting in someone’s corn field, we packed up early and got on the road headed along the coast for Trabzon, Turkey.