21 July, Mardin
MardinKale Pansiyon 50TL (negotiated down from 60TL)

I love Turkey’s public transport. Small blue buses trundle up from the new town, where you can find large supermarkets and a Burger King, and wend their way along Mardin’s old city one-way streets and back down the hill again. Regularly and all day long.  What I love is that they stop to pick people up wherever they happen to be, not only at designated stops. So this morning we took my back wheel with us in search of a bike repair shop to replace a broken spoke and rebalance a serious wobble. We flagged down a bus just near our hotel and asked those on board where we could find a bike shop and were subsequently dropped literally 5m from what we needed. Love it. The rest of the day was spent watching a TV series recorded for us by a good friend (we have seen no English TV in nearly three months), preparing for today, and dining well again.