What an entertaining and VERY informative report! Thanks for taking the time to post!

AZ..happy all in all went well, even with a few gliches here and there..and your bothersome hip. Report is concise and informative..the ingredidents of a TR worth reading. Happy travels..hope hip is healed.
stu

Topping to read slowly and carefully. Looks very very good.

thanks so much for this report. we are going this spring and i will refer back to this many times, i'm sure.

i always love a report that reports the good as WELL as the ugly. very helpful!

Istanbul Eats tour sounds fantastic. Thanks for the reco. Its definitely on my to-do list in Istanbul ( i am visiting in sept).

otherchelebi: The black cat was the devil incarnate. Before it even spied me, it viciously attacked three other poor kitties who dared to glance towards the restaurant tables.

However, the black cat did make me feel special :)

I think I get what you mean about writing about the cycling, but I honestly don't think what I could tell about our routes would be of use to the "Let's get a group together and plan a cycling trip."

It's really not Point A to Point B cycling. The company more or less maps out each day interesting daily journeys on roads with great views or stops that can provide some people with cycling challenges and others with "lollygaging" possibilities. Then the guides have the heavy burden of servicing everyone on what could be a 60-mile span on any given day, making sure they all get to a lunch spot, making sure they didn't get lost or fall over some hillside. On some days, the guides have to do this shepherding AND transport luggage to the next hotel.

I have outlined elsewhere on this forum the cycling tour companies we've liked, though. This was our 17th cycling tour. I hope I can get to 20!

purduegrad--Thank you for your compliments. If you figure out what's true and not true with this cellphone thing, let me know.

lincasanova--Thank you, too!

stu--The hip and I are not friends, I think. Thanks so much for saying the report was concise! I worried people may have fallen asleep by the time they got to the end.

taconictraveler and kwah--Thanks. I do think you need two cups of coffee to get through this report. Kwah, I hope I didn't overemphasize the bad. I liked Turkey a lot.

shwets--Maybe you can convince Angelis that he belongs in the US. Two New Yorkers did manage to capture him for a few days recently and showed him Little Italy, the Lower East Side, etc. He just ate his first canoli.

Alessandrazoe, on cycling, I meant quality of roads, paths, how scenic it was and where was better. Hills, plants, historic sights, birds, lakes, streams on the way. How much other drivers respected you, dangers, help on route, availability of repairs. What type of bike you would recommend, tyres, gears, breaks, shock absobers, weight, material, etc. for the terrain. Ease or difficulty of wearing helmet, recommended clothing......

I know that I would nnot attempt this at age 68, but cans still sort of dream about it. I once went all the way from istanbul to Marmaris when I was 17, but came back on a boat.

Villagers were not used to local tourists, let alone cyclists in the 1960s. When we checked into a miserable hotel in a small town in the middle of nowhere, the guy at reception turned to his friend an said, "look, the foreigner not only speaks our language but also has a Turkish name!!"

Other, I know what you mean, but for most of what you mention, I don't have or even get to make choices on these tours. The bike the tour offers is the bike I get. We all are required to wear the tour-provided helmets. I would never go with a tour company that did not have that requirement.

Any needed repairs are done by the guides, so I'm never relying on any "stop at the gas station and get air" scenarios.

As to Turkish villagers, I wave and they all wave back. That's pretty much the same in any country. I don't recall ever being afraid here or elsewhere. I think we all got the sense in Turkey that our belongings were always safe, though.

Here's how these tours work. You get up in the morning, you eat, the guides give you a general idea of how the day will run. You all meet by the bikes, the guides hand you sheets of the route for the day. Sometimes a little map of the day's route is enclosed; for this trip one never was. The directions consist of general mile/km to the next left, right, straight, etc.

So that's why I don't even have a clue as to tell you which roads to take. I wouldn't know if we had cycled Turkey Route 101 or US 66 :)

Part of any good tour's job is to try to find less travelled roads with with scenic views no matter what country the tour is in. So we could be in an area where someone thinks there are no good roadside views, and I'll be darned, the tour company has found one. It could even be a stretch of a dirt road at the top that makes an uphill climb worthwhile.

The Datca peninsula and areas along the Turquoise coast did have some stunning vistas, I must say. We'd be along coastline one minute and through pine forests the next. Nice. The road surfaces for our selected routes could be a little iffy in some places and were fantastic in others. Drivers down there tended to be pretty chill--they weren't Istanbul manic.

More info on tour stuff: Guides switch off each day for either van or bike support. One is on "sweep", cycling to the front and then to the back and then to the front. The other guide does van support, dropping off luggage to the next hotel if it's a move day, ordering or picking up supplies if it's a picnic day, and the guide is also there to swap out wheels or cycles, refill water bottles, hand out snacks, etc, on a moment's notice.

People ride at their own pace. My husband zooms ahead and we don't see him at all for most of the day. I lollygag, stopping to take pictures, ID flowers and birds, etc.

We usually have daily mileage options, usually a short, a medium and a long. For the most part, you don't have to decide ahead of time what to do. There are days and trips, however, where the guides need that decision in the morning so that they can support the rides of all the guests efficiently. For example, on one day, it was possible in New Zealand to do a century (100 miles). If one guest would likely only cycle 15 miles and three would likely do centuries, and others guests were doing 30 and 60, then van/bike support would need to know who was doing what to support them adequately.

Back to the point about not always doing Point A to Point B. On this trip, we had buses waiting for us or dropping us off many times because trying to use Point A to Point B routes didn't work at all to get to the various areas we were visiting. And once we got onto the gulet for our last nights, we'd be sailing to a different cove each night, and then we'd have water shuttles to and from shore for our starting/ending points.

Remember we started in Bodrum, ferried across for two days on Datca, explored Knidos. We moved onto Turgutkoy, Marmaris, Dalyan, and ended in Gocek. That's a lot of ground in six days, so you can understand why the bus and water shuttles were so vital to making it work.

As to bikes, I'd say of most of these trips you can choose an upright or a drop-handle bar. I always get an upright 21-speed bike. I have, ahem, seat problems, so unlike most people, I bring my own bike seat and my own special gel cover. Most people bring their own pedals; my husband and I do not.

Turkey in the south in the summer is hot, hot, hot and chances of rain are rather slim to none. I made sure that I bathed in suncreen each morning and reapplied often. I made sure that none of my cycling clothing was black--I even wore tan shorts over my black cycling shorts.

And since I never use clips--yeah, after 17 trips, that fact sort of stuns people--I just use athetic shoes as my footwear. On this trip, I just wore regular Keens H2 Newports sans socks.

Here's something else, other---My husband is 67, and I think he'll be doing these trips until he drops.

So, otherchelbi, 68 is not the limit. Your bike awaits!

Thanks, for exactly the kind of info I was looking for. I would join your husband next time if I lose that 30-40 pounds an evil sorcerer loaded on me.

Your report, already very useful and very readable, has now become required reading for all possible adventurers who travel with or without their saddles.

You never fail to make me chuckle, other. My husband says if you're willing do drink beer, he'll ride with you all the way.