Morning Prayers

Curtis posted;
It may come as no suprise to some, but a majority of Turkish people are Muslim. This translates to a significant number of Mosques across the country and the bellowing tones of 'call to prayer' echoing at regular intervals throughout the day.  We have always enjoyed the cultural diversity this represents, until the night that we checked into the Biga MRG hotel. Little did we know that the Hotel was strategically positioned next to a mosque, and the regular intervals occured at 4am that morning. All we could do was laugh as the call to prayer blasted through our windows like a Metallica concert at 4am...

Cara Says,

Whenever the call to prayer starts up we have a joke about what it sounds like they are singing/wailing.  Constantly laughing at Curtis, his best translation to date is that they are singing; "I have to woooorrrrkkkkkkk I have to wooorrrrrkkkkk." or "I wear clooothes I wear clooothes".  We know this isn't really funny and a little disrespectful but at 4am we let it rip.

After I finished partying and Cara finshed praying at the Mosque, we indulged in a stella breakfast at Hotel MRG and set off on the bikes. Our aim for the morning was to reach the town of Can (pronnounced Chan) for lunch. The terrain from Biga to Can was awesome.....Cara would continue to say 'how beautiful is this', agreeing I would say 'great spot for a golf course!!!' (seriously). We make Can in good time and stop in what seems to be the regular for each place, the town square for another cup of cay. As we meander through the streets soaking up Can, a man walks up to the bikes impressed and claims me. He starts yelling Turkish to which I appoligetically reply in English. He insists that we have lunch with him (I think), to which we decline.......Cara and I dicuss how dissapointed we are at not saying yes to such great opportunities. We continue to ride through town trying to find some stilts (for cara) and quickly stopped to the agressive shouting of a man. We turned around and here was the man again encouraging us to have lunch with him. We finally obliged and had one of the best feeds we have had to date.

The man spoke only in Turkish while we ate, but hung on every word we said. We got up from lunch, and found he was waiting fo us to finish eating and had paid for our meals, only to show us his motorbike shop. Needless to say the man was impressed by me, and I am used to this behaviour from women the world over, but not from men twice in 3 days. I am beginning to understand what Beckham feels like.

Cara says,

"Ok, the man was clearly in love with Curtis.  Scowling at me whenever Curtis looked away, I felt like one of the street cats.  When he insisted on us staying the night at his house, while clutching Curtis' arm (see photo), I said NO WAY out the side of my mouth to Curtis.  So we set off as he run after Curtis' bike handing him a Turkish flag and blowing kisses."

Jealousy is a curse Cara. After we bid farewell to my number 1 ticket holder, we set pace for a steady afternoon and encountered one of our steepest climbs directly out of town. We could only laugh as we thought of our luck riding up this MASSIVE hill. The rest of the roads were friendly until we hit Etili where we encountered our firt major road hazzard. A BROKEN SPOKE.

doesn't look like much - but this was amazing food

No 1 ticket holder

Checking the map just to make sure the hills were worth it

disaster stikes