Chapter IV
'Turkish Delight'
March 2023,
A two month split from one crescent moon to another, I actually cant even remember why I booked this one, I think my travelling addiction fully took over around this point, when people are asking you why are you going to Turkey and your answer is ‘why not’ might be the giveaway. This trip was another short one, and probably the cheapest of the lot, Friday to Monday, Bristol to Antalya and cost a whopping £80 for the flight and the hotel £56! 56 British pounds for 3 nights, still blows my mind now. Any trips I don’t take through package holidays I use ‘Booking.com‘ and I have seen all the adverts and what not, kayak this, trivago that and I am still unconvinced that booking.com isn’t the best. I use it for airport transfers, hotels and even flights. I find its quite a good idea to ask the hotel for travel arrangements through the website, see what they come back with, then compare with booking.com ‘book a taxi,’ if all fails at least you know what roughly is a good price when you step off that plane for transport to your hotel and how long it should take. The flight to Antalya is just over 4 hours, think people forget how big Europe is, well technically Antalya is located in Asia. I booked my travel with ‘booking.com’ and was greeted by a big 4×4 pick up, had no idea but looking around they all seemed to be the go to vehicles. It took me a while to work out why but it started to make sense, Antalya is a massive golfing destination for groups and I assumed they used these to caddy round golf clubs etc, but this trip was not a golfing retreat for myself, just another country and city to scratch off the map.
I grabbed a beer at the airport jumped in the vehicle and off we went, I wish I could remember what we talked about I had no idea, after a few overpriced cans on the plane I was just ready to get out explore and have some local beer. The hotel I booked was purely for location, I wanted to be in the middle of Antalya and close to the old town, which in turn was next to the marina, so a great place as you are about to find out. It took around 20 mins to get from the airport so once again ideal! The hotel was exactly like the pictures with a restaurant at the base of the hotel, the rooms were very, very good and remember we are talking about under £20 a night, checked in with no fuss, threw my bag into the room and headed out.
The old town is surrounded by a mass wall with a few entrances leading into the cobbled streets of the old town and just like every other its where the tourists gather so the bars do the same, I really enjoyed walking around Antalya it was different to other places I had been so far, a little more touristy yes but still full of culture and local influences, being the buildings designs or the numerous amounts of incredible mosques, castles and clocktowers, there is a lot, is what I am saying going on. I stopped in a few different bars walking around all very unique, went into a place called ‘Odin’s bar’ then ‘bar Anubis’ very tourist influenced but they had live music and the Turkish do have some whopping beers, its safe to say I went back with a wee headache for sure.
I woke up the next day reasonably early to my surprise and headed for the cafes, theres a lot on offer and outside of the old town major shopping centres, bigger restaurants etc, it takes me about 10 mins to walk from the hotel to the border of the old town so definitely a walkable city. In the daylight you see more of what Antalya has to offer, I visited some merchant squares, which all love a spice stand, walked the streets of the old town again because you would do well to cover it in a few days never mind my brief visit the night before. I sat down for some breakfast which overlooked the entrance to ‘Hadrian’s Gate’ I am sure you’ve all been or seen of a Hadrians Gate, they were built everywhere in memory of the great Roman Emperor ‘Hadrian.’
The food was very nice, it was fresh and not expensive at all, I assumed this was quite a popular area to have food, a lot of people were coming and going but I just wanted to sit there and take it all in for a little bit longer. I then had a walk towards the coastline there is a lot to see my issue was walking into the middle of some sort of marathon, I wasn’t sure if this was normal if i’ve somehow snuck past the barriers I don’t know! But it was highly amusing and highly annoying to navigate the cobbled streets. I made my way down to the marina and it was as good as everyone said it would be, small but full of incredible looking boats and plenty of shops etc, there was a restaurant/bar that overlooks the marina which is definitely worth a stop and a bite to eat, I think it was called ‘Yuvam Cafe’.
I didn’t have any plans for more drinking so I sat overlooking the marina until dark which for myself as you’ll soon find out is rare, not just the drinking but the staying still. I tried to do some research into some excursions, if there was some nearby sites a short distance away, to my recollection nothing stood out, well nothing with a day left anyhow.
A place of interest was located east of the city, ‘ the Duden Waterfalls’ the source of the river itself is up north then splits off east and west of the city. I got a cab and it took about 15 mins to Duden Park, to be honest there wasn’t a lot going on around the park, just the locals playing football or sat down enjoying a picnic any other park really. But as you made your way to the coastline small rapids started to form and all of a sudden a pretty sweet site emerged the Duden waterfalls, yeah it was worth 15 mins, a lot of people are in the same positions trying to get the same shots and I am told you can get boats which give you better angles from the marina in Antalya, so happy I did see them in the end.
I got back to the city and traveled west, looking on my phone there was a pretty impressive beach that was located about 20 min walk from the city centre, so thats where I headed, It was the local side of town for sure, the shops were a little more run down, the restaurants were a little bare the streets had dog shit on… what I am saying is it was like any other city in the world that separated the tourism location from another. I took it pretty easy that day it rained for a few hours so found shelter had some food and waited for the sun to come back out. I had no real intention of going on the beach due to the weather but needed to see it for sure.
The Rocky Mountain split the marina on one side and the beach on another, which is pretty cool. In all was pleasantly surprised with Antalya the town itself is definitely worth a visit, I mean it must be good for golfing groups and I bet the beach is a completely different animal in the summer. All in all another successful trip.
