Istanbul to Ankara with a side trip while waiting for a visa

So Since I knew I would be waiting in Istanbul for visas, and my parents were worried, they had arranged to meet me in Istanbul and we flew to Izmir where they rented a car and we drove around for three days visiting a bunch of tourist trap heritage sites before I flew back to Istanbul. I realized this was the first time I'd been in a car in about three months.
Immediately after landing in Izmir we headed towards Ephesus which is an old roman city.

The model in Vienna:

The real thing:

We also stopped by what's left of the Temple of Artemis, a single column sitting in a swamp:

We drove to Pamakkule the next day, to see the travertine pools, and hundreds of other tourists:

There is also the Roman town of Hieropolis behind the pools, which also includes an amphitheater:

The next day it was off to Aphrodesias to see yet another roman ruin. This time the highlight was probably the stadium:

The old Agora (and much of the rest of the ruins) were also covered in swamp:

After that I took a plane back to Istanbul while my parents stayed on the coast. I got my Kazakh visa for the low low price of $160, met up with someone from couchsurfing and tried chikofte which is a sort of spicy vegetarian wrap that's actually very good. The next day we headed out to one of the princes islands just south of Istanbul which are sort of a different world. It seemed to be much more relaxed particularly since they must've had a rule about no cars on the islands because it was mostly bikes and horses with carriages.

On the suggestion from my great host in Istanbul, I took the ferry from Pendik to Yalova to avoid the massive highways east of Istanbul like the ones I had tempted fate with on the way into town. After disembarking from the ferry, I set my cycle computer to kilometers/meters/celcius, and reset everything. This was the start of my true Asian adventure, and I had had enough of mentally converting miles to kilometers for the last 2 months. Since the start in Edinburugh I have come roughly 3500 miles and climbed Everest about 5 times.
All along the road from Yalova they grow cherries, and sell them for about $1.5 a kilo, so I bought way too many. I made it to Iznik by sundown, where I guess their claim to fame is the Istanbul gate, which is apparently a wall around at least part of the city.

I made the mistake of spending the night in between cherry trees just outside of town, so I got to listen to dogs barking all night. I didn't set up the tent because it wasn't supposed to rain, but I probably should've since the tent keeps the bugs out.
I spent much of the next day climbing and working my way around these mountains:

and finally I made it to Tarakli at about 7pm, where I wandered into town, parked my bike, bought some bread, walked across town to buy some baklava, only to have the baklava bought for me, as well as a glass of tea. After much inquiry, I was shown a place to camp in an empty lot owned by the guy who bought me tea, and told to come back after dinner. I would've much preferred to camp outside of town after the mostly sleepless previous night but felt rude turning down his hospitality, so I locked the bike, ate dinner, then wandered around town trying to find the historic sites that were supposed to be there, but I couldn't find anything. I did find a huge cliff that gave me a great vantage point to see the town. There are five mosques in this picture:

After that I headed back to the tea shop to sit around and "talk" to the Turkish guys (and only guys) there. I also received a free ice cream cone from another Turk. After learning a few Turkish words, the 10ish o'clock prayer call came and people started leaving to head to the mosque so I used that as my excuse to leave and go to sleep since I was tired from doing 100km that included a lot of climbing. Tarakli was actually much quieter than Iznik.
I spent the next day climbing, and climbing, and climbing. I spent the first 2 hours of the day rising to a 1200 meter pass, only to reach the summit and lose 400 meters in about as many seconds. Then I spent the next 2-3 hours climbing back up to a 1300 meter pass, but this time there was at least a decent payoff and the next 30km into Nallihan was all a slow decent with a nice tailwind making it almost effortless. Nallihan itself turned out to be a town only good for dinner and a resupply and I made my way up the hill out of town to sleep, again without a tent. While riding and thinking, "hmm, this looks a lot like the midwest/western US" it occurred to me that I am literally in the midwestern part of Turkey:

I've also come to absolutely hate whoever told the Turks that honking at cyclists could be a friendly gesture. It seems that even outside the cities I can't go more than a few minutes without being honked at. Particularly the truck drivers love to come right along beside me and then blast their horn. As if someone could ever appreciate that. This is probably the only thing making me hate Turkey right now.

From Nallihan I made my way towards Ayash, where I came along this interesting bit of terrain:

Ayash is an interesting town that is built up on the side of a hill.

I arrived at the end of the day after about 100km and was tired. I was stopped by a group of kids playing soccer who showed me the local market, and they proceeded to all follow me around for the next 10 minutes and watch what I bought, and how I stored it in my bags. As I was pushing the bike up the huge hill that makes up the town, I parked it and started walking up a section that looked like a promising campsite, only to be stopped by a local sheepherder who seemed to care very much that I was walking in a field. So I walked back down the hill about 200m, parked the bike again and walked up the other side of the hill, only this time on the way down I was greeted by a local policeman. Apparently walking up a hill is frowned upon in Ayash. He asked for my passport and when I refused to give it to him he didn't press me on it too hard, which meant that either I hadn't been doing anything wrong or he decided that I wasn't worth his time. Either way, playing the ignorant foreigner card seemed to work and I was on my way out of town. The joke's on him because I literally made it about 20 feet past the sign denoting the end of town when I spotted a great hiding spot to set up camp. This time it threatened to rain so I had to set up the tent. The view in the morning was worth the trouble of the day before:

After several hard days of 100km each, I had an easy day of 60km into Ankara where I successfully made my way into a hostel here.