Sinop Merkez, Turkey

An hour-long flight on Turkish Airlines brought us to Sinop, a city on the Black Sea. We are staying at the Efua Hotel, which is a couple of kilometres out of town and has a sweeping view of the sea. It’s cool here, but not as cold as we expected. The hotel owner doesn’t speak English, but with our trusty phrase book and the help of his computer translator we can understand each other…he is so obliging and eager to please! Today we did a huge loop of the town, trudging up to the highest point to try and see the whole peninsula, but we were stopped in the end by a barbed wire fence and an armed soldier watching from his tower! Sinop has been occupied for thousands of years, there is still evidence of the old fortifications in places. The most exciting thing was finding the castle had a bar on the roof…what a fabulous place for a drink!