24 October

After being awake at the same time, I was finally up at 0615. I did some Internet work, checking emails and seeing how many hits I had on Flickr (but still not knowing how many (if any) read my blog) and after the usual preparation, I was down to breakfast 0655. There were still some down before me.
After a leisurely breakfast and a walk around, I was out at 0815 for the bus, but the bus didn’t leave until 0832 as two passengers (and I won’t say who you were, Lyn and Sue) were late. Not too long after we left, we stopped to photograph terraces from below and in a different light. Then we drove until we stopped for morning tea (in this case, morning yoghurt, honey and chick peas). The scenery changed from the very fertile areas with valleys in between rolling hills to plains with mountains in the background, and then we started climbing the mountains.
We stopped for lunch at a roadhouse, which was supposed to have fast food, but today … only slow food. Sue, Lyn and I walked along the road and bought some apples at a stand on the roadside, before returning to the bus. The mother and daughter at the stand were very nice, but although we had few words in common, we were able to communicate.
The drive to Konya in the afternoon saw the land becoming flatter but higher. Along the was we saw a huge line of trucks waiting to be weighed at a sugar beet depot (more than a kilometre) by 1525 we arrived at our hotel for the night. After finding our rooms and dumping things, we headed over the road (yes, just over the road) to the Whirling Dervishes monastery. After a tour around there, and about an hour, some of us walked the bazaar streets of the town. I did a bit with one couple from England and then more with Sue. At the end of that, we tried to find a bank where Euros could be withdrawn, and fond three ATMs, but none which obviously had Euros. We did some supermarket shopping, and were back at the hotel by 1830 to finalise Optional Tours and pay for them. While I was waiting, I looked at some previous pictures and found I had an audience.
After the payments were finished, I had tea. During tea, I showed two women from Manchester shots of Australia and where we had been recently.
After all that I retired to my room to process today’s photos and thought I would have to go downstairs to upload them, but found the signal in my room was now strong enough to access the Internet, so I uploaded them, wrote my blog, posted that and went down to see others before going to bed.
Unfortunately, perhaps as doing nothing is getting to me, I dozed on the bus today. Perhaps I need to do some driving, but I don’t think the driver (Biral) would let me. No walking and little time out would have made me more sleepy too.