It is amazing how we made the morning disappear with doing very little before our long bus ride to Istanbul at 1200. We walked to Serdika Bus Station (next to the Train and Central Bus stations) where the bus was already there. Surprisingly, Metro Turizm, a Turkish company has Bulgarian-registered buses with Bulgarian livery. Onboard the TV programmes were in Turkish and so were the coffee/tea and cake packaging. The crew were Bulgarian too.
It was a 2h drive on the motorway to Plovdiv then on jiggly roads to Haskova before getting back to smoother driving conditions.
Because we hadn’t visited the monastery museum yesterday, we had a little too much money left but money changers in Turkey operate on slim margins so it wasn’t a big issue.
Trucks queued up for border clearances about 5km before we got to the border. It was further than the eyes could see. Fortunately cars and buses could go straight through. We reached the Bulgarian checkpoint at 1645 and with a nearly empty bus, we were through in five minutes.
Trucks queued up for border clearances about 5km before we got to the border. It was further than the eyes could see.
We parked at the duty free mall on the Turkish side for 10 minutes where we bought a snack while others got cigarettes.
Our bus queued up behind five others at the checkpoint and it was about 40 minutes before it got to our turn as each bus was processed separately. It took about twenty minutes for our bus load to be stamped in and our luggage scanned before we could set off agin.
Around 1930 we pulled into a rest area for a 10 minute break where we bought some rice and eggplant and mince stew. It was really spicy and delicious. Fortunately we had a little more than 10 minutes before we continued our journey to Istanbul.
The weather had progressively dried up as we headed east. Sunset was supposed to be only 30 minutes earlier than Sofia but it seemed darker than I would have expected. The sea appeared on our right hand side around 2000 and by 2030 the landscape was decidedly built-up with skyscrapers.
We pulled into Istanbul’s ginormous multi-storey Bayrampasa station at 2100, about 1h15 earlier than scheduled. It appears that once the bus crosses into Turkey it no longer has to stick to a schedule as it has no further pick-ups. We drove underground through and climbed up to a rooftop parking where the bus platforms were located.
Istanbul’s might as a well-established transport and freight/logistics hub is evident with the size of the bus station and the multi-storey truck parking area … all very well-established rather than new.
Hopping into the first taxi outside, we set off and were then told there was a TRY100 surcharge on top of the meter. Well, it might have been a con but it was too late. It was more than 20 minutes to my favourite area of Istanbul, Sirkeci, where we had booked into the Glamour Hotel.
We dropped our bags and came back out for a sandwich and juice under the awning of an outdoor cafe amidst the rain. The long day didn’t feel that arduous. It was Kim’s first time back in Istanbul since our first time here 16 years ago. For me though, I’ve had four other visits, the most recent being only a year ago.