At last we have arrived

After many hours of travel 30 + I think, we have arrived in Istanbul and made our way to Bosphorus University and Burc beach.

Amazingly there were no hitches or problems during our trip, no missed placed passports. THe guys from Military History Tours did a superb job with the Dubai stop over. We had about 8 hours on the ground in Dubai and so we went to the Jumeriah Beach Hotel for the morning. Great for a bit of a chill out and the most wanted thing - A shower!!

Dubai has to be one of the most incredible places, everything thing is huge,

the airport, all the buildings, the cars and the boats. We saw some amazing building designs that would never be approved in NZ.... It was very warm too. I think that when we left at midday it must of been in the forties, although that can't be proven as we didn't have a thermometer, the aussies were wilting as much as we were.

We arrived in Istanbul at 5:30pm local time and all that we wanted to do was to get some proper sleep. Fortunately dinner was waiting for us when we arrived at Burc Beach and the university campus. So a quick meal with many trying not to dip their heads into their plates we headed to our rooms for some much needed sleep.

When we woke this morning it was to a lovely calm day. There is a lot of haze and just off shore are hundreds of boats that sit waiting to be escorted through the strait by the pilot. I have attached a few of the photos taken this morning.

We have spent the rest of the day at the competition location, very nice area and gee do the turks know how to set things up for people using the beach - big bean bags and lounge chairs and umbrellas everywhere.

We have been in and out of the water all day. A bit of rowing training, a team swim for about 1 km. We will be having a team swim every day I think. It makes so much of a difference to have warm water.

Not many photos from the racing that happened at about 3pm so I promise to post some more later. The tour of Istanbul is on for tomorrow and we will be starting nice and early. But before that can happen we need to unload our boat which is arriving tonight at 11 pm (what a long day for us).

Time for me to sign off now as there is a bit of a line to email home. xoxo