Somebody eventually double-checked my ticket. Be warned; tourists headed for Turkey's little-visited Black Sea do tend to cause amusement, such is the tourism monopoly enjoyed by the country's Aegean and Mediterranean coasts. Certainly the Black Sea coast boasts few of the usual tourist attractions. Old Greek Trabzon may have the famed frescoes at Aya Sofya cathedral and the Greek Orthodox monastery of Sumela clinging to a precipice 25 miles out of town, but the initial impression is of a more neglected, industrial and plain, rainy coastline than its southern counterparts.
Still, as my fellow passengers soon assured me, the Black Sea had other things going for it. Neither does the Black Sea suffer from the usual resort hawkers pushing everything from carpets, leather jackets, boat trips and meals; the only Black Sea attempt on my wallet was from one of the many Russian prostitutes, or Natashas, plying their trade in Trabzon.
It goes without saying that the excess rash of hotel developments, discos, bars and boutiques that has broken out along Turkey's Mediterranean and Aegean holiday rivieras is entirely absent here. The tourism facilities may be second-rate, but then the spirited figures of Black Sea legend - Jason and the Argonauts, the warrior Amazons and even Rose Macaulay's indomitable fictional Aunt Dot of The Towers of Trebizond - were famously unconcerned with creature comforts.
Like-minded travellers should find Turkey's northern coastline beguiling, moody and intimate; every bit as different, in short, from the White Sea - the Turkish name for the Mediterranean - as their contrasting names imply.
Here are mountain-backed coves, tea and hazelnut plantations, and the grand but decaying architecture of the fishing ports, promontory castles and former Greek communities that extend for miles east from Istanbul to the border with Georgia.
