Turkiye: the Last Leg of My "Odyssey"

Since last Friday, when I left Mykonos, I have been in southern Turkiye.  I flew into the city of Antalya, which I'd visited on a cruise ship about 3 years ago.  I had no idea it has a population of more than 1 million people and a fairly big airport.  I was met by my favourite Turkish guide (well, the only one I know), Atahan and he and I will be doing a road trip through this part of the country until November 19th when I fly home.

We drove into the city - a lot of neon signs, tons of them - into the old town which is basically a pedestrian area.  That is where our hotel (Atelya Art Hotel) was.  It was quite charming, albeit old, with a courtyard and small swimming pool.  Our rooms were across an narrow alley and everything was in dark wood.  Below are some photos from that evening and the next morning to give you an idea.

We wandered through the old town to the cliff overlooking the harbour where we had dinner.  It was all very lovely.

The next morning, we started our adventure with a stop at Hadrian's Gate, an easy walk from our hotel.  The gate was built in 130 AD.  The monumental structure has managed to be preserved until today and it is one of the most valuable historical artifacts among the city's symbols.

From there, we travelled by car east of Antalya, into the countryside.  In the distance we could see the mountain range that makes up such a large part of Turkiye.  Our first destination was the ancient Roman theatre of Aspendos in the ancient city of of the same name.  It was built in the 2nd century and is one of the best preserved ancient theaters of the Greco-Roman world.  Even today, it is still used for concerts and it can seat up to 20,000 people.  

From there, we headed to the Manavgat waterfalls.  They were very beautiful and I took lots of photos.

Our destination that day was Kas and I'd booked rooms for us at the Kayahan Hotel.  It was fairly new but up a bit of a hill from the seafront; however,, the views from my room were lovely.  We walked down the hill (not too far) to a restaurant called Meyhane Voyn where I ordered a lamb kebob with some salad and fries.  It was all very good and the white wine I had called Allure was excellent.  We’d arrived just in time to see the sun set which made it a particularly magical evening. 

The beauty about having a private tour is that you can make adjustments when the weather or other things don't cooperate.  We'd planned a boat trip for the next day but, as the weather didn't look promising, Atahan delayed the boat trip a day and, instead, did what we'd planned to do the next day. So, that morning, we visited the ancient city of Xanthos and then continued on to a couple of other places of interest.

The first was Patera Beach which you reach by driving through more ruins.  It is one of the longest beaches in Turkiye and renowned for its environmental program for saving loggerhead turtles.

Next up, on our drive back to Kas, was a quick stop for a photo op at a famous beach called Kaputas.

It was a bit after midday when we got back to Kas.  We'd decided to have lunch rather than dinner.  That was good as shortly after we'd arrived, the wind started up and, by the time, we found a restaurant, it was bucketing rain and really stormy.  

After that, we'd decided to skip dinner and just have a drink on my balcony before calling it day.  Tomorrow, we are going to do what we'd delayed doing today,  Stay tuned as it was amazing!