Speeding ticket!

Turkiye has both toll roads and free roads, and so far we've managed to spend our entire time here on the free roads. The toll roads have a tag system only, so if we wanted to use them we would have had to register Max at the post office and have an account with some credit on it. 

But here in Istanbul, we are going to have to cross the Bosporus Straight either by bridge or tunnel and they also operate on a toll system that would normally be charged to the same highway pass that we don't have. 

So I was looking at how that would work. It turns out that foreign plated vehicles without a tag will get charged, and you can pay it either online or at the customs office when you leave the country. But during my research, I came across a website that checks for speeding infractions.

I input Max's licence plate number... and there was one infraction listed!

They have a lot of speeding cameras in Turkiye, and we remember one right near the beginning of our time here that flashed as we went by. Now, Max is rarely speeding. In fact he's usually the slowest one on the road, being passed by the majority of vehicles. But this one time we were probably going 70 km/h in a 60 km/h zone or something like that, and I got caught.

The infraction gives very little information. Not even a date! The fine was 320 lira ($27 CAD, $22 USD) and I paid it online. I would have had to pay it at the customs office at the border anyhow, because they check foreign vehicles when they leave.

Yesterday was a miserable day. Cold, wet, and windy. We did get out for a couple of hours in the neighborhood. We walked back over to Max and dropped off some clean laundry. And we walked over to a specialty grocery store to look for some naturally brewed soya sauce, but it was ridiculously expensive so we didn't buy any. Maybe we can get it in Bulgaria.

Neighborhood near where Max is parked.

And we stopped by a computer repair guy to have a look at Ruth's laptop case. The guy didn't speak a word of English, but he got his buddy on the phone to translate. He said he could make it serviceable, but it wouldn't be perfect. It would cost between 180 to 200.

We're thinking "is that lira?". If it's lira, that's a great deal. He says "no, U.S. dollars". Now why he would quote the price in dollars is a mystery to us. You would think if it wasn't lira it would be euros. Anyhow, as I'm packing things up to leave, the price is coming down by the second. No, I won't pay 150 dollars. No, I won't pay 125. By the time we were walking out the door he was down to 1,000 lira ($68 USD).

I hate situations like that. Yes, I understand the culture here is to bargain for pricing, but of course the problem was we weren't even sure what we were getting for that price. Maybe we'll try again in Bulgaria. In the meantime, the laptop still works... it just doesn't open and close very well.

We've decided we're leaving Istanbul a day early. The weather is the same today as it was yesterday. Miserable. We have no ambition to go out sightseeing, so we would rather put some miles on driving when it's like this. We feel like we didn't really do Istanbul any justice, but it gives us a reason to return when conditions are better. 

Kevin, Cheryl, Ruth.

We had a great time with Cheryl (thanks Cheryl!) and I'm sure we'll be back to see her again someday. There are more restaurants we need to try together!

So, we are headed out this morning. We're going to take the tunnel and then head west towards the Bulgaria border. It's still about 300 kms (185 miles) away, so we'll probably break up the drive and overnight somewhere on this side, and cross into Bulgaria tomorrow morning.

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Amazon Smart Thermostat.

And in Canada...

Blink Mini Camera.