Ever been on a Turkish bus? Luxury my friends! First, lets get to Turkey. We leave our little studio at 2am. The hotel driver is clearly practicing for the Indy as he speeds us to the airport. My seatbelt doesn’t work so I slide over to squish in behind the driver who is in a half laying position. Duct tape holds the seatbelt together but at least it works. We know this flight has a stopover in “Sofia” but neither of us knows where that is! At the check-in counter I ask and the clerk laughs at me- its in Bulgaria. We spend the night on the plane and with the stopover in Sofia we don’t arrive in Istanbul until 0900hrs. We have planned a route through Turkey, so instead of staying in Istanbul we take the metro directly to the bus terminal. Its a flashback of the moroccan ferry terminal with with over 100 stalls selling tickets. We are approached but not hounded by a few vendors. We get tickets and have 20 mins to wait...naturally I am starving so I run back to the metro area to get a snack of sandwiches and on my way back to the bus I hear “BJ NOW!!! Its leaving!!!” Steve is yelling at me and is clearly in one of his over anxious panic stricken travel moods. He hustles me on the bus and scolds me- turns out we still have 10 mins to sit there and wait...
The bus is new and very comfortable but the best is yet to come. Two server men board the bus, wearing dress shirts and bow ties! At precisely 1030hrs the bus backs out of the station with every other massive bus in the station- its like synchronized swimmers- all in perfect time they pull out of the station in this grand performance. Our servers get to work. First they go around to each passenger with a bottle of heavily perfumed hand sanitizer! We soon learn that they do this every time we leave and get back to the bus. They even febreeze the bus if it smells bad! At one stop, the outside of the bus is washed while the passengers get food and stretch! I will also point out that the windows are free of greasy hair splotches that tend to be present on planes and trains! We are served water, juice, tea, coffee, pop, and snacks of cakes and pretzels etc. The servers are picky about tucking in all the overhead luggage straps and collecting any garbage immediately. A passenger’s cell phone rang and the server bolted over and politely gave him the ‘slit the throat’ signal to shut it off. Following our drinks and delicious sandwiches we were fast asleep. I woke up at one point and my jaw was sore so I knew I’d been sleeping with my mouth wide open but I just went back to sleep. I woke up again and saw the most turquoise blue water ever- I nudge Steve and he mumbles ‘wow’ and we both fall back asleep. The bus eventually stops and then boards a ferry- surprise! Apparently there is a ferry ride too! Its a short ride on calm water. Our hostel owner meets us and leads us to our home for the next two nights. We get to the room, sit on the bed, fell back, and wake up an hour later with our feet still on the floor...its been a long journey- time to explore Cannakale!
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