Trabzon, final destination

Yesterday we reached Trabzon via the coastal route from Batumi, Georgia. The only reason why we returned into Turkey after Georgia is that we have an air ticket to Amsterdam from here. Maybe this had been different with a better planning in advance :-) .

Trabzon is a city of app. 250.000 and very crowded in the centre area. We have a nice room with our own balcony overlooking the port and with a view on the planes landing and taking off from the local (our) airport.

Today is the last day of ramazan. Although we were informed otherwise ramazan is very well notable in this city. Many facilities closed, difficult to find a coffee or sandwich before 20.00 hrs. But tomorrow this will be over, fortunately, pffff. Also to our surprise there are many women completely covered in black (burqa, niqab). We were told that the coastal area would be more modern, but this does apparently not apply to the complete population.

For those who are interested in the stats of this trip:

In two months we did 2800 kms through Greece, entire Turkey, into Georgia and back into Turkey. Both Turkey and Georgia are very mountainous countries, so altogether we climbed more than 23000 meters. This made it sometimes a tough tour, but also a very rewarding one. Especially the eastern-Anatolian high plains with their abundance of flowers and the mountain passes between 2000 and 2550 altitude were beautiful and made a deep impression on us. Not to mention our awfully nice encounters with the Turks themselves.

We feel very satisfied with this trip, again we feel priviliged to have had such wonderful experiences.

View from our room