It was raining today - this has actually been quite a rarity on my trip and so I was not too unhappy as I lazily rolled out of bed and sauntered downstairs for breakfast. I've really enjoyed my stay in Plovdiv and it's a city that in the old town and certainly at the hostel makes you feel really relaxed. Everyone else was up and about and chatting away. Stephan, who helps run the hostel, was active as usual making sure that we had everything.

With the rain gently falling on the town, a couple of us decide that we will walk around town and go second hand clothes shopping as Stephan had told us that this was the best place to do it. Sadly we were mostly disappointed as we strolled in and out of musty-smelling clothes shops, but it made for a good laugh seeing just some of the clothes Bulgarians might actually buy! By the time we returned to the hostel it was still raining and I was fed up with the weather and spent the rest of the day packing, reading and just generally chiling out - a good relaxing day before my trip to Istanbul in the evening. Just before I got on the train another Nick, who'd been really interesting guy to talk to (being an artist), and I went out for a super supper at one of the nearby restaurants and it topped off a great day.

I headed down to the train station and had to wait over an hour for my train to arrive, but when it did there was hardly anyone else on it. I found my sleeping carriage and tried to get some sleep. At about 2am a loud knock woke me up and we'd reached the Bulgarian border for passport and what seemed like never-ending and incomprehensible customs checks. I sleepily handed over my passport and just tried to act  completely lost by the whole process. By about 3am they'd left and I went back to sleep. Of course I'd forgotten that about 20 minutes later we'd arrive at the Turkish border post and the whole rigmarole would have to start again. This time we actually had to get off the train and make our way to a small room with people supposedly queuing. In fact it was more like a bunch of people crowdinground one small window shouting orders at the poor official sitting behind it. At one point the shouting erupted into a full blown argument and one guy had to be escorted away. As there were only a few foreigners in the queue we all looked at eachother and smiled and how utterly ridiculous theituation was. It was about 4.30am by this time and none of us had the energy to argue with the various queue bargers and fat women squawking away. In a very British was I patiently just let the corwd get on with it and took the whole situation in. By 5am I had finally got my passport stamped after having successfully prevented the idiotic official from trying to stamp my Iranian visa.

Most of the rest of the train made for the adjacent duty free shop and consequently made the train wait another half hour but I retired to bed hoping this would be the last of t he interruptions. Of course, it wasn't as teh Turkish police had to make one final check that all was in order before letting the train depart closer to 6am. All this kefuffle meant that we didn't arrive in Istanbul  until about 11am, several hours later than intended and I arrived completely exhausted. Still it was good to finally be here.