Author: simon

Last day – very sad.

Can’t resist a few more photos of Dalyan – sunrise.

And then a pretty cruddy journey.  No iPads allowed on BA from Turkey (other airlines don’t seem to mind).  3 lots of security, including a full manual inspection at the gate, meaning an hour and a half delay leaving.  No food on the plane.  Traffic jams and heavy rain on M25.  Welcome home!

A visual feast today, as we try to fit in everything Dalyan has to offer in a single day.  But first a bit of context.  Dalyan is a small town on a river, with some ancient tombs opposite our hotel.  The river flows through an estuary and ends up at a famous beach that is really important for turtles.  Here’s the estuary – the beach is the horizontal line halfway down the photo.

Got it?  So an early start to the day from the hotel.

Glorious colours in huge abundance.  Anyone know what it is?

We had tried to find out about boat trips last night, and were expecting to pay about £40 for a private hire.  Then the owner of the hotel suggested we take the public boat (£2.50 each return to the beach) and he would ask it to stop to pick us up.  Made sense to us.

A wonderful 45 minute boat ride.

And here it is.

And here we are ….

And apart from sun, sea and sand, this is why many of us make the trip.  It is a really important place for them to lay their eggs – which they do in May – and so is closed overnight.

Allegedly David Bellamy caused a huge fuss in the 80s to stop them building on the estuary – successfully.  Can’t check on Wikipedia as it’s banned in Turkey!

Afternoon was a different mode of transport – me, car, ferry.

To famous ruins which we missed.  To be fair, this is the entrance,

Church (ruins) almost 2,000 years old – in a pretty bad state of repair.

But a trek up the hill to the fort rewarded with glorious views.

Ferry home.

And that’s just about it – it then rained!  Amazing place, amazing country, amazing holiday.

Leaving Kas today – it’s been fabulous.

On the way to Dalyan for a couple of days before home.  Stopped off at Xanthos on the way – a really important site but not especially photogenic.

Ruins in the rain.  Thunder wasn’t up to UK standards by all accounts, but not bad.

Then to Dalyan – view of the tombs across the river from the hotel.

Dinner in town.

Cheers!

It’s our last full day at our wonderful house in Kas.  Thunderstorms were promised, and whilst there was a lot of rumbling, there was nothing spectacular – shame.

Usual difficulties in getting going, but took ourselves off to Myra in the afternoon.  Wonderful tombs and theatres.

Then just a couple of kilometres to this church.  The bishop became probably the most famous saint in the world.  Any ideas (see bottom of today’s blog).

And here’s a first.  Driving home and went round a corner and had to take evasive action to avoid this little fella.  Least we could do was help him cross the road – just weren’t sure which side he was aiming for!

And up in the mountains gives a good sense of Kas.  We’re in the middle – last house on the shoreline.

Couldn’t resist one last time!

And here’s the bishop.  St Nicholas, or Santa Claus.

Usual start to the day …

Eventually roused ourselves to visit Kekova about half an hour away, and took a boat trip.  This was our boat and captain – total number of passengers = 2.

Village and castle of Simena.

Then on to the highlight and purpose of the trip – the sunken city (earthquake in the 2nd Century).

The sunken harbour.

.. and the ruined church.

Dinner at the harbour – he is the owner and the chef.

And found a friend – the owner’s daughter who is exactly the same age as Jo, studying in Heidelberg and speaks great English.

And finally, submitted the application to star in Titanic II – eat your heart out Leonardo!

Pretty much the same as yesterday – sitting around gazing at the view, occasional swim, coffee and baklava etc.  This is the view from above the house – pretty much the same,

Recognise this?  Yup – same as yesterday.

Our little “beach”.

Dinner in town.  It’s reasonably quiet here, but looking at the number of restaurants, we can only imagine it must be horrendously busy in summer.

Or a little bit lazy.  Took a walk (about 30 – 40 mins and a couple of hills) into Kas in the early morning when it was wonderfully still.  Our house is the one on the left.

The beach where we ate last night.

Hmmm.  Needed a dip as it was getting pretty hot, but you’ll probably want to hurry past this one ….

View from lunch.

We did venture out to the theatre later on – it’s a low key Presidential election!

Same view a bit later on.

Dinner in town.

And found a friend called Rocco who has a crazy 5 minutes as though we’re long-lost friends, but then calms down to be good company.

It’s forecast to be another scorcher tomorrow – can’t see us doing much different!

That’s it for Istanbul – an early start and a flight south to Dalaman.  Picked up the hire car and:

– came across a great new hire car idea – you think of everything apart from you having to pay to get out of the airport car park once you’ve collected it.  It’s only £2 and I’m impressed!

– stopped by police within about 20 minutes.  They waved us on pretty quickly.

A slight detour to  Fetinye which Eileen had been to many years ago.  Nice cafe for lunch.

And the answer to “what’s in a Turkish breakfast?” came back as “eggs, olives, cheese,  a cigarette break, tomatoes, honey and Turkish coffee – who could resist!

And then a 2 hour drive to Kas.  Driving fine so far – much better than Portugal.  Liberal use of the horn and the hard shoulder when being overtaken, but no real aggression.

Then our house for the next few days.  Not bad.

Even came across the local fauna in the sea!

But this is what is really special – the view from the terrace.

I suspect there will be a few more of these.  And don’t be fooled by the clouds – it’s 32 degrees and getting hotter tomorrow.

So down to the local taverna about 15 minutes walk for the most fabulous fresh fish dinner.