Making our way to the ferry, we cross the Bosphorous as we would have had to buy tickets to cross the bridge so this was the quickest and cheapest way to get through the craziness and mad driving experienced in Istanbul. This day was mostly highway driving, cool and approx. 450 kms of riding and at one point, elevation was four and a half thousand feet high. We passed a major steel works industry that looked like something out of Mad Max. We passed through Karabuk and arrived in Safranbolu, a Unesco World Heritage Site since 1994. This is home of the saffron; a purplish flower with 3 reddish stigmas in the centre which is the part used to make saffron. We learned that saffron was used in all their meals, sweets (Turkish Delight) and for cosmetic purposes. We were greeted by a young couple and baby and stayed in a boarding house with several rooms for all of us. The two Micks did minor repairs to the paniers on our tour leaders bike and the rest of us walked around the small town where we sampled some bread, lots of Turkish Delight, visited the Turkish Bath and took pictures cobbled stone streets and old buildings with their wooden half timbered houses preserved along with the Ottoman cuisine that has been established as a stop along the silk road. Everywhere throughout Turkey, whether it be in the modern areas or small older traditional muslim communities, prayer time happens five times a day except on Thursday, the day in which they have six prayers due to Friday being the "holy day".
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