Post 1 - Hello Turkey!

We're here! We are in the land of incredibly hospitable people, endless sunshine and bread, bread and more bread! But more on that later.....

After around 30 hours of travel we arrived in Antalya in the early afternoon. We were picked up and taken to our small pansiyon, family-run B & B type of place. We got a gorgeous room, complete with a lacy canopy over the bed. We stayed here for three nights, settling in and getting used to things.

We stayed in the old city which was completely gorgeous but weirdly empty. It was kept immaculately clean but seemed fairly empty and lifeless compared to the dirty, bustling new city outside the old city walls. It was a lovely quiet place to stay though and it was easy to find our way around. We spent our days walking and exploring, trying to keep up our fitness up for the trek.

The old town had cobblestoned streets and gorgeous overhanging balconies. It had some lovely restaurants but it also had its fair share of tacky tourist places and carpet sellers.

Looking across to the old city.

The old city, plus the sprawling high-rise apartments of the new city, are spread out along the beautiful coastline with amazing snow-capped mountains in the distance. This means there are many spectacular viewspots. This wasn't a bad location for lunch at all!

There are even waterfalls spilling over the cliffs right in the city.

Gulets, beautiful traditional wooden boats, took tourists out at sunset beneath yet another spectacularly-located restaurant. We sipped on cocktails while we watched the sunset. It's a hard life...... Not long after this we had to leave cos it was just too cold. We've been surprised by how cool the nights are. The days seem to be in the low 20's and sunny though.

We thought we should brush up on our Turkish history before we head out into such a historical part of the country so we visited the Antalya Museum. The Lycian part was interesting (it's mostly a Lycian area we will be trekking through) but we were blown away by the Roman statues. There were rooms after rooms of these that all came from one ancient site - Perge. I think we'd better visit that one after the trek!

Turkey has an amazing public transport system. There are mini buses everywhere and flash, comfy large buses whisk people around the country on fast motorways. We caught a bus to Fethiye, our next destination. It was a spectacular, comfortable ride right over the snow-covered mountains.

We found our way to our next accommodation. It was very basic - we have to stick to budget places wherever we can - but the views from the balcony were wonderful!

We really liked Fethiye - it was friendly, easy to get around and much more a living, breathing city than Antalya. Mind you, Fethiye has only 80,000 people so it's a bit like a big country town.

The old city markets have become very trendy.

As luck would have it, we were there on a Tuesday, market day. It was an incredible market!

This one's for you Courtney - pomegranates are everywhere! We loved our mixed orange and pomegranate juice!

Our happy Turkish coffee seller.

There is such an abundance of historic sites in Turkey that people often don't put much importance on them. New houses are continually built over the ruins of previous ones. In Fethiye, these ancient Lycian tombs are carved into the rock cliffs at the back of the town. The new town is built right up to them. They were looted years ago but the cliffs have prevented them being built out at least.

Just a few hundred metres from the 2000+ year old Lycian tombs was a 700 year old castle built by the Crusaders. (Turkey has been raided by, or merged with, an incredible number of other races or religions. It only became the Turkey that we know after it became independent in 1923.) John looks a bit Crusader-like here!

The next day we did a bit of a training walk. We headed first to the nearby town of Kayakoy. The village just before it was beautiful and lush. It was very much a farming village and much to our surprise we turned a corner and saw this in a paddock. You really just never know what you find!

Kayakoy has a really unusual history where the Turks living in Greece and the Greeks living in Turkey swapped towns and countries after Turkey's independence. There were far less people came to Turkey though and the beautiful stone town they came to was soon abandoned. This has left a whole town slowly falling down but it's wonderfully atmospheric and we had a great time exploring.

I should warn you now - I love old doors! You might see a few of these pics....

It's spring here and I've also fallen in love with the small red poppies that grow together with small white daisies everywhere.

The old church at the top of the village.

From here our plan was to join the Lycian Way, the trek we will start on soon, to the village of Oludeniz. We weren't being too particular about it and decided to short cut across to the track. Big mistake. We found arrows and assumed we were on the track. After we slogged half way down the side of the mountain it became obvious that we were heading in the wrong direction. We were following a track beneath some large power lines though so decided to keep going as the power lines must go somewhere. They did - straight to the most beautiful bay you've ever laid eyes on. It had crystal clear turquoise water - and not a soul in sight! One hope we had though was that there were two boats bobbing on the water.

Soon we heard voices and found a restaurant but it was closed. We called out and, to cut a long story short, the owner agreed to take us in his boat to Oludeniz. Our other option was to slog back up the hill and I was keen not to do that! The boat ride was wonderful!

We are having a great time. I'll be back with more soon.

Hope all is well with you wherever you are.

Heather

Footnote: We later found out that many other people have followed the arrows and got 'lost' here. It turns out that the restaurant owner is running a bit of a scam! Oh well. It was all part of the adventure!