The name of the beach town in Bulgaria was Lozenets. Did we stay there one night or two, now I can’t remember…? I guess it was just one. We had driven to the end of the road again here and found a rather bleak, wind-blown town on a bluff, had a beer, turned around and found a place with a few more people and a nice, clean friendly pensione. We had a good dinner, although we still hadn’t quite learned that “Pectopant” wasn’t the _name_ of the restaurant, but the word “restaurant” itself… In the morning I walked across town and down to the beach and did my exercises and had a swim. Although this was the same Black Sea as in Vama Veche, and only ~200 miles to the south, here it was clean and blue, and the beach was much nicer and nearly clean as well. We learned later that Lozenets is a popular weekend beach destination from Sofia.
We took off around mid-day and drove backroads towards the Turkish border, cruising slowly up and over a range of green hills. This was our first non-EU border crossing and it took some time. We had to get stamped by four guys in four different offices, in a specific order. Even so, everyone was friendly and the English-speaking turks waiting in line with us helped us along. Once across the border the road got a bit bigger and we made it to Kirklareli for late lunch. My first impression of Turkey was *so* much different from anywhere else we had been. Much busier, everyone out on the streets, a million little shops, clearly prosperous enough, lots of commerce everywhere. We got money and found a cheap and clean looking place to eat, and the owner welcomed us iand brought over his daughter to practice her English. The food (basically mini-hamburgers) was nothing to write home about, but the experience was notable. These people were happy and open and having fun.
After lunch we got on the road and hightailed it to Istanbul, making good time once we hit the autobahn and hitting town about 7 or 8pm, I guess. My Turkey guidebook was ten years old and all the hotels had changed, but we found a good one without too much trouble. Loren and I had slightly (but not hugely) different ideas about what made for the ideal place to sleep, but the basic idea was two-star with A/C and a lift in cities and pension or agriturismo outside of cities.
