Muh

Today was a completely disatisfying day although I did at least finally get my Iranin postcards posted. We were both grumpy- for my part the late night was probebly contributairy and for Alex's part I don't think he realised how serious I was about buying a chair and wasn't impressed about either loosing visability if it was stored inside or the reduced petrol efficiency plus security issues if it was stored on the roof. With his early night and my late one we also hadn't properly discussed our route from here and we had to decide as we drove through the busy streets which road to take out of town. Alex's origional plan had been to follow the wiggly, small coast roads, passing through pretty if un note worthy villages and get as far around as we can. The previous day I had read up on all this would involve missing in the interior- princibly some extensive Hittite ruins- as I felt we had no sight seeing on our agenda for northern Turkey and that this would be a wasted opportunity. The roads here also looked a lot faster. In the end, having to decide fast, we choose the interior route although I think we both felt we'd made the wrong decision later on. The rock tombs in the very pretty and touristy town of Amasya were not that exciting, although the town it's self was quite attractive with well maintained and restored Ottoman buildings. Alex found the steep walk up to the tombs incredibly tiring which he found frustrating. I got excited when we were handed a leaflet for hot springs that were on our route but they appeared to be badly signed and we missed them. My still aching limbs slumped in disappointment. When we finally got to the Hattusa ruins there was only an hour of daylight left and we agreed that we'd rather spend the time looking for somewhere to sleep rather than have to rush around the site and then be faced with looking for a spot after dark. We spent the whole hour driving around roads and tracks all over the area and saw some lovely views but found nowhere quite satisfactory. In the end we headed back to Hittusa and took a spot at one of the out of town hotels that also offered camping space. It was out of season- the hotel was shut up and they warned us that there was no hot water but it seemed the easiest prospect by now. We were also intreiged to see a campavan there with British plates and hoped for some company at the very least plus the resturant was apparently open. No such luck- the others had young children and appeard to all go to bed at 5pm and the resturant was uninvitingly open ONLY for the possibiliy of us eating there-I hate being the only customer and Alex is still prefering to survive on cup a soups. I made a soup with slightly more body than that and we hung out in the car all night reading our seperate books as Alex still decends into a fit of coughing whenever he speaks. A dispiriting day.