Day 160
12 hrs, 5 .1 kms
Day Total: 16 hrs, 9.6 kms

From Bolu to Duzce the scenery is quite beautiful. The flat landscape suddenly changes, and we’re cruising on a highway high, high up on a hillside with a deep forest valley to the side. There’s a kind of American feel to this area—with American style houses and typical American type highwayside businesses and restaurants with big sign and big parking lots. And then the landscape flattens again… and we reach Duzce.

Here the bus luckily drives right into the center of the city where I hop off and quickly set out to explore this place as quickly as possible. My plane leaves tonight—and I’m still a couple of hours from Istanbul… and I’ve still got Adapazari to explore as well.

Duzce has a cozy shopping district with a clean, modern feel to it. Nothing really distinctive about it except maybe that the main mosque is a square, modern building rather than the typical Ottoman style . I wander on until the city starts to fade a bit… walk past a couple of schools and through a residential district… do my video clip in a typical Ataturk Plaza simply because I can’t find any place really unique…

So as has happened numerous times, I end a trip on a pleasant, but not exactly spectacular town. Which is quite OK—this gives me time to just look back a bit at all that I’ve experienced over the last 46 days and prepare for my transition back to "Normal Life Mode".

Then, when I reach Adapazari, my next town and realize that I don’t have enough time to explore this city properly—so I’ll have to leave it for another time... it sinks in: I really don’t want for this trip to end. These last 7 weeks have gone by way to fast and I really want to keep going.

It’s the first time that I can remember having this feeling after a long trip. Usually after 5-8 weeks of travel I’m quite ready to head home and take it easy for a while… but not this time . I suppose it’s because this trip has just run really, really smoothly, so I haven’t being worn down by the problems and irritations along the way.

It’s a good feeling to have. I’m sure I’ll still be happy to be home once I get there… I do miss my wife and kids. But it’s also nice to realize that I’ve got the fire in me to do a much longer trip than what I’ve done. Maybe not the 4 year trip that my fellow traveller Giles did… but a bigger trip than this one.

But now, it’s time to head on back to the pleasant, serene routine of daily life. I get on the bus to enjoy one last 5 star service with refreshments and my own little TV screen… I gaze out the window as we cruise along the tunnel-bridge-tunnel-bridge freeway past Suadiye… Izmit… Derince… bringing back memories of my 2006 and 2010 trips… which seem so far away now…

I reach Kadikoy… where I meet up with David—the fellow I met in Laos in 2007 and we go out to chat and grab something to eat . I run through my list of delicious Turkish foods I’ve enjoyed these last 3 days to see what I’m missing. Adana Kebab? Done. Beef and Eggplant Stew? Done? Menemen (tomato omelette) Done. What am I missing? Than I see it: Kumpir—baked potato stuffed with everything you can imagine…

And with that, I bid this amazing and ever so welcoming section of the world farewell… I head to the airport, get on the airport… and head on back to Casablanca…

And speaking of pototoes… where of all places is the guy sitting next to me from? Lalla Mimouna! The scrappy little Moroccan village where I sang for the potato harvesters back in 2009! I would never have imagined that someone from that village would go on vacation to Turkey—particularly when the workers told me they make as little as 2 euros a day! But this fellow is heading home from his honeymoon in Istanbul…

A nice final touch to my trip—linking two very different segments of my Global Parkbench Tour together.