Cin Bal restaurant, Kayakoy.

Posted on February 27, 2017 by livingtheturkishdream

Everybody knows our favourite thing to eat in Turkey is a BBQ. But sometimes after a long day you don’t want to pack up everything, head to a BBQ spot, set it all up and then do the washing up afterwards, which is where this restaurant in Kayakoy, called Cin Bal, comes in.

It’s a lovely restaurant, well known and well sign-posted in Kayakoy village. It’s not your usual restaurant though as there is no menu as such.

You go in, chose your seat, either a standard table with chairs or a traditional köşk (a wooden seating area with lots of cushions and a low table) and then walk into the restaurant and chose your food. As there isn’t a menu the options vary. There are usually lots of cold meze’s to choose from which you can view behind the glass fridges, and then you chose your meat. They have all sorts of meat, including lamb, chicken and beef. You buy the meat by the kg, which means you can easily overeat…We had peppers, onion and tomato, aubergine salad, steak, lamb skewers, chicken wings, meatballs and sucuk between the two us which was way too much, but we still finished all of it! Once you’ve chosen the meat, you either get them to grill it on their BBQ for you, or they bring the ready-lit BBQ to your table, along with some tongs and the plates of meat and you can cook it all yourself.

A lot of people aren’t keen on the concept – why would you want to cook your own food? Maybe, if you’re on holiday it’s a bit weird, but for locals, weekly family BBQ’s are a great way of socialising and getting together, especially on Sunday’s – this restaurant gets very busy at weekends. I love the whole atmosphere of BBQ’s with everyone sitting around chatting while grilling and enjoying the food as and when it comes fresh off the grill, and Cin Bal definitely has the perfect atmosphere. You can see from my photos the smoke coming from the BBQ’s under the lights and the smell of it all is just amazing!

We’ve never been in the height of summer, so I expect that is a whole different experience, but we have been twice in October when things are a little chillier. It was late evening at the start of October when we went and as Kayakoy is higher up than Fethiye and Calis it does get quite a lot cooler, but luckily they have thought of everything and have blankets and shawls you can use to keep warm if needed! I was sat all snuggled under the blanket while Berkay slaved away cooking… Oops.

It’s definitely worth a visit whether you chose to have the food cooked for you or like to cook it to perfection yourself. All the great atmosphere and taste of a BBQ without any of the washing up and mess afterwards! Perfect.

Our Turkish Wedding Part 1.

Posted on May 8, 2016 by livingtheturkishdream

Back on the morning of the 27th April I woke up in our apartment to the sound of the waves on the beach, with Berkay in bed beside me. It was our wedding day! Traditionally I know the bride and groom aren’t supposed to see each other the night before, or the morning of the wedding, but quite a lot of our wedding day was a bit backwards!

There wasn’t a cloud in the sky, and the forecast rain for the previous day had fallen and cleared ready for our day! Berkay and dad took me, mum, my stepmum and my little sister to the hairdresser in Fethiye around 10am. I had been worrying about how well this would work out since we booked her as she doesn’t speak any English, but she’s the wife of one of Berkay’s work friends so we got a good deal and she was really friendly, despite the rather large language barrier. Dad and Berkay left and went back to Calis and all the ‘boys’ had a shave and massage together, but not before Berkay gave instructions to the hairdresser about how NOT to do my hair and makeup, I did not want to have blue eyeliner and be orange! The lady done my makeup first, and other than some bright pink lipstick initially, it looked really nice, even if I do say so myself! Next was the hair, I came prepared with a photo of how I wanted it and she did that really well too.

Next, the hairdresser started on my little sisters hair while I went into a corner of the salon behind a screen and started putting on my dress. I was worried about the dress fitting right and not showing too much boobage (!) It was a little odd getting dressed in a tiny corner of a hot salon on the 2rd floor of a building in Fethiye town centre, but apparently this is the done thing in Turkey, and most brides do get ready in the salon with their friends/family. After a lot of pulling, tightening and lacing the ribbon by my mum and stepmum, we managed to get my dress on and looking exactly how I wanted it. A quick 10 minutes back in hairdressers chair and my veil was in and hair finished, complete with ALOT of pins keeping it in place, ouch.

At around 11.45 Berkay arrived back at the salon, now clean shaven and fully dressed in his wedding suit, to pick me up. Now, this is the backwards part of the day! While usually the bride and groom get ready separately and don’t see each other until the ceremony, we were spending the entire day together having a wedding photoshoot before our service at 6.30pm in the evening. This is normal in Turkey, sometimes they even have their wedding photos taken on a different day to their ceremony and wear their wedding outfits, do their hair and makeup etc twice, sometimes days, weeks or even months apart!

Berkay had already seen photos of me in my dress as I couldn’t resist showing him, but it was still very exciting and surreal when we were stood face to face with each other in the salon fully dressed in our wedding attire. A couple of minutes later and we were walking downstairs and through Fethiye town centre towards the car with the photographer behind us, leaving my family back at the salon.

I think my family found it quite hard to comprehend how, and why, we would spend all afternoon driving around in our wedding clothes and squashing my dress in the back of a boiling hot car. I must admit, when I first got to the car and realised how much of a struggle and how uncomfortable it would be to sit in my ridiculously tight corsetted dress squashed in the back seat, I did wonder ‘what the hell am I doing?’ but when I thought about the beautiful photos we’d get as a result, I realised it would be worth it and I certainly wasn’t disappointed!

Our photographer knew all the best places to go for photos. Berkay was driving and the photographer gave him directions. We ended up driving through Kayakoy and onto the road towards Gemiler Island. In the middle of the road high up on a cliff side, the photographer instructed Berkay to pull the car over and with a bit of help I struggled out of the car and scrambled across the dusty road and rocks to the side of the cliff. The photographer climbed up a few rocks, knelt down and snapped some photos, shouting at us what poses to do. These two photos are some of my favourites because I love how blue the sea looks in the background, it captures the true beauty of the whole Fethiye area and looks almost too perfect, like we were photoshopped in! I can 100% say we were not and actually none of these photos have been at all edited or photoshopped as we collected the CD the day after and they didn’t have time to edit them.

On the way to Gemiler the photographer had spotted a perfect photo opportunity in a field, so he made sure we stopped there on the way back. There’s a funny photo he captured of me and Berkay walking through these plants and me with a look of pure disgust on my face because of the amount of bees that were buzzing around my feet and all the other wildlife in the flowers that I was trying to avoid getting stung or bitten by! ‘Just sit down in the middle’ the photographer said, easier said than done with my dress on, so I settled for a half kneel-half sitting pose, but it still came out really pretty.

Next stop was Kayakoy, but not before parking the car next to a pancake house for a lunchbreak and a glass of tea. Yes, local people and tourists were sat in the shady pancake house enjoying a spot of lunch when in we strolled, dressed up in our wedding outfits looking totally out of place. So many people walking past wished us well and said ‘may God make you happy’ etc in Turkish (Allah mutlu etsin / hayirli olsun) but I felt really silly sitting struggling to eat a pancake with my big white dress on with everyone staring! It was a lovely sunny day without a cloud in the sky, but thankfully not unbearably hot so wandering through Kayakoy after our little detour was quite pleasant, if a little difficult because I was holding my dress up making sure it didn’t get caught on any sticking up stones or rocks. The first few photos were very posed, and reminded me of something you’d see in a catalogue. He had us doing all sorts of poses which had me in fits of giggles because they were so ridiculous! He had me staring into a stone window at a random person and pretend sniffing flowers at one point.

I really love the individual photos of me and the full length shots of my dress, the photographer definitely captured the surroundings well as well with the green trees and ruins in the distance. I’m not usually that much of a fan of Kayakoy but it’s nice to have a bit of Turkish history in our wedding photos.

After having a lot of snapshots taken at Kayakoy we headed back towards Fethiye where I requested we stop at Asiklar Tepesi (lovers hill) as that is my favourite place to get beautiful panoramic views of Fethiye. Each time I visit Turkey we always drive up there and sit down with a drink and an icecream or something similar and admire the view so I’m glad we managed to have some of our wedding photos there.

By this point it was around 2.45pm and the photographer suggested we drive to Gunluklu bay, via Calis. On driving through Calis, he decided it would be a good idea to stop at the infamous half finished, multicoloured houses by the canal. Rumor has it that these old houses were owned by someone in the Turkish mafia who was either killed or put in prison and the wife/s argued over what should happen to them afterwards, so they’ve remained unfinished, unused and left to be ruined by weather and old age. Whatever the truth about these buildings is, it’s a real shame as they would have been lovely properties in a nice location and keeping them there with no plans to use them is a waste of good space. We accidentally walked around the area once and got told we weren’t allowed to be there, so when the photographer told us to get out of the car, enter one of the buildings and walk up the the top floor I was a little worried, especially with the potential ‘mafia’ link!! Regardless, we did as he said and walked inside the house, through piles of rubbish and a lot of broken glass, mindful of my dress all the time, and up the stairs to the first floor. The photographer did manage to get some nice shots but it was still a very random, slightly scary location!

The next stop was Gunluklu bay, the other side of Calis, past Ciftlik and Yaniklar, on the main Fethiye-Dalaman road. They took a small entrance fee and we parked up, got out and stood among the huge trees which provided much welcome shade. The trees in the background made a lovely backdrop and I love all the out of focus green blurs behind us. The only bad thing was that I got absolutely eaten alive by mosquitoes and covered in bites that swelled up, I had 3 elbows on one arm at one point and had to make an emergency stop at the chemist on the way back to Fethiye.

One final stop was a tiny beach that I’d never been to before, I didn’t even know it existed and I’ve forgotten the name now but I hope to go there again and find out next time I visit Turkey. It was down a long road near Yaniklar and it was really beautiful and empty.

At this point it was 4.30pm and time to go back to Fethiye, Berkay walked back to get the car and I stood waiting in among the trees for him and the photographer to come back. I think this photo perfectly captures my mood at that moment, hot, bored, stressing about the wedding that was due to take place in a couple of hours time, covered in itchy mozzie bites and worn out from lifting my dress everywhere.

Right after these photos were taken we headed back to Fethiye and back to the hairdresser who done a quick touch up of my hair and makeup and then we set off on our way to our wedding ceremony and celebration in Calis.

Despite doing things backwards that day, and having our photos taken before actually being married, seeing each other before the ceremony, I’m so glad we did it that way. All the wandering through fields, getting a bee stuck in my veil(!!), climbing over rocks, through dusty ruins and being squashed in the back of the car with my big white dress for hours was all worth it and having these photos of all the beautiful places around Fethiye as our wedding pictures to look back on forever is just the best feeling – we certainly wouldn’t have got those lovely photos from a wedding in England, would we?

Turkey Day 2 – Paragliders, Emu’s and flowers..

Posted on March 26, 2016 by livingtheturkishdream

Even though I’ve flown to Turkey and back again since then, I’m so far behind with my blog that I have lots of ‘days’ to catch up on!
Back at the end of January I woke up in our apartment on the 2nd day of my visit. After not being with Berkay in person for 9 months, the little things are the important ones. Little things like waking up and cooking breakfast then sitting and eating it together. Our favourite breakfast is sucuk (Turkish spicy sausage) and egg, lovely served with fresh warm crusty bread and orange juice. Yummy.

After breakfast and a long, lazy morning we headed to Fethiye. Fethiye is our favourite place so whenever we’re thinking ‘I’m bored, what shall we do now?’ we usually end up back there. This time we ended up in Saliha Sultan Pastanesi for some lunch of the sweet kind. Saliha Sultan (Previously Sultan Pastanesi) sells amazing cakes, baklava and other sweet treats.. I had profiteroles with a crazy amount of chocolate sauce, and Berkay had a huge banana cake covered in a chocolate and pistachio shell… photos don’t even do them justice! Of course it was washed down with a glass of cay.

After walking around Fethiye in an attempt to work off a mere bite of our lunch, we decided to drive to Oludeniz. It was a fairly warm day, but rather cloudy so the sea didn’t look the usual magnificent shade of turquoise. It was very empty, apart from a bit of building work going on and a few paragliders floating above us. It’s always funny watching out for paragliders coming towards your head, you see the shadow of their parachute on the ground, turn to look up and realise you need to very swiftly move out of the way because its speeding right towards you to land! I giggled at the little reminder on the floor – brilliant.

We rarely venture into Oludeniz, I can count on one hand the amount of times we’ve been there in the past 6 years, and never to the ‘strip’ or any of the bars or restaurants, only to the beach – it’s not really my cup of tea, it’s somewhere that I think looks lovely from above, but a little disappointing once you’re stood looking at it from ground level. On the way back we took the road through kayakoy, just to enjoy the scenery – even the infamous Emu! SO fluffy and SO cute, in a weird way.

Just before sundown we went back to Calis and back to our apartment at Sunset Beach club. I love these apartments and we have stayed there several times – they’re very empty out of the summer season and we were some of the only people staying there – most of the pools had no water in them, but the one right outside our balcony door did which made for some lovely photos when the sun reflected off it.

When I’m visiting Turkey we don’t like to eat out in restaurants, it just feels more personal and more ‘normal’ for us to cook and eat at ‘home’ together. I always say that being in Turkey isn’t really a holiday for me, it just feels like going back home, so we like to do those everyday homely things that everyone else takes for granted. Berkay cooked our dinner this day and it was delicious – love that Turkish rice and homemade ‘real’ chips, yum!

After dinner we went to visit some of our other Turkish friends – on the way we drove past a flower seller who was asking people if they wanted to buy any. Berkay wasn’t going to stop the car so I jokingly said ‘ohh, don’t you want to buy me any?’ to which he responded by abruptly pulling the car over, jumping out, running over to the seller and coming back to the car with a big bouquet. ‘I was joking, you don’t have to buy things just because I ask, if I said I wanted an elephant would you buy me one?’ I asked – ‘If I could find one’ he said …. Bless him. Such a romantic when he wants to be… even if the days when I’d get cheesy roses are long gone.. (:

A little adventure – Hisarönü, Ölüdeniz, Kayaköy & Fethiye!

Posted on June 15, 2014 by livingtheturkishdream

On Wednesday Berkay rented a car and we went on a little adventure – visiting Hisarönü, Ölüdeniz, Kayaköy and a little bay in Fethiye for a BBQ picnic!

Berkay managed to rent a car from a friend from one of the hotels along the seafront in Çaliş for a good price – 60tl – but as we only wanted the car from 9am til 9pm, we got an even better deal and got it for 40tl. Bargain! I know nothing about cars, but Berkay tells me it was running on gas – which is apparently a lot cheaper than diesel/petrol so it didn’t cost us much to keep it going even though he did a lot of driving!

Berkay had a long nap while working the night before so he wouldn’t be too tired – and picked up the car on his way home. By 10 o clock we were on our way – first stop Hisarönü!

I’d only been to Hisarönü twice before – not a fan at all – way too cheesy for me – quiet little cafe’s and restaurants by day and loud, obnoxious bars by night – but each to their own. It was good to walk around though and no matter how cheesy I thought it was, it got my attention, I just had to stop and take photos of these shops… you’ve got to love their sense of humor – brillant! Driving past it looked like there were some lovely hotels in the area – I guess it’d be a good base, easy access to the beach on the dolmus and plenty of entertainment at night time with an easy walk home 😉 I also loved how much cooler it was up there. I found myself getting cold shivers! We stopped at “The Turkish Ivy” restaurant for breakfast – we walked through the whole main street and this was the busiest one of them all. The waiter came over to ask what we wanted and Berkay answered for me “ingiliz kahvaltisi” (English breakfast) the waiter then looked at me like I had two heads “ingiliz kahvaltisinda domuz eti var” (there’s pig meat in that) Berkay then informed him that I’m English so it didn’t matter. The waiter was shocked and insisted on telling me how I look Turkish and how he can’t believe I’m a ‘yabanci’ (foreigner). I hear this ALL the time. I should just permanently walk around in an England shirt or something. Regardless, breakfast was lovely – It’ll probably be the last time I have pork while I’m here so I was enjoying it! It was only 9tl and they even had real HP sauce. HP sauce is the one thing that is always well stocked in my house, whether in England or here! After breakfast and a brief walk around we headed to our next stop – Ölüdeniz.

I’ve only been to Ölüdeniz a handful of times too and only ever via buses packed full of people so I never noticed how amazing the view on the drive down the mountain side is – the water looked so beautiful. We parked the car, got out and headed straight to the beach which was suprisingly really empty. We didn’t pay to go to the lagoon part – just the normal beach which is still really pretty – the sea is so turquoise. The only issue with the beaches around the Fethiye area is how stoney they are – I need to invest in some good rubber sea shoes as it’s impossible to enter or climb out of the sea elegantly with all those stones and rocks under your bare feet!

We only stayed for around 45 minutes as we could see the clouds rolling in over the mountains and wanted to get home and have our BBQ before the forecast rain and thunderstorms started, but we had a nice little swim, it’s a much better beach than the one in Calis as the sea is so much clearer. As you can see, I took my camera in the sea and we had some fun with that, it’s not that I trust myself not to drop the thing in the water , because that is something that my clumsy self would definitely do – but I do have a waterproof little case for my iPod, which is what I was using. It’s brilliant, really secure and it means we can take photos in the sea without forking out for an expensive waterproof camera, it’s definitely a great invention.

We made the 40 ish minute drive back to Calis and stopped off at home to get changed and get our BBQ supplies. On the way we stopped at our old house to borrow a portable BBQ from our old landlord. Him and his wife both gave me a big hug and told me to go back for dinner, tea and biscuits some time. It was weird seeing our old house – it was the first time I’d actually seen it since I’d been back. It’s occupied now and apparently they’ve made lots of changes like knocking walls down and making the tiny cupboard toilet we had into a bigger one! We got the BBQ, packed up the car and headed off to a little bay on the other side of Fethiye town centre.

We picked a table, parked up and unpacked. I noticed there was a cute bear sat next to the table – I thought it had been left there and was planning on taking it with us if it was still there when we left – I couldn’t bear the thought of it being stuck out in the rain and alone! (I know, I’m weird) Later on though, a little Turkish girl from a family sitting on a nearby table came and got it – I’m not sure if it was hers or she just spotted it and grabbed it like I planned to… but either way I missed my chance and I’m glad the little orange bear now has a home.

The view from the the bench we chose was lovely – because it was a bay the sea was almost still and we could just hear the tiny waves lapping on the water’s edge. Berkay got the BBQ started and I prepared the salad… before I came here I never liked aubergine, actually I’d never tried it but assumed I wouldn’t like it anyway! Since experiencing these Turkish BBQ’s I’ve learned to always try new things – it’s so good when it’s put whole into the coals of the BBQ, cooked, peeled and chopped up into a salad with olive oil and lemon juice. Yummy. Along with the salad we had beef skewers, chicken and jacket potatoes. Somehow we actually managed to eat it all!

It was nice to just be able to go somewhere alone, just me and Berkay, and have a BBQ. It was the first time we’d ever had one alone as we normally only go with friends as we can’t get to these places without a car. We used to be able to have BBQ’s on our balcony but now we can’t as there’s not enough room – so we’re definitely going to have to go out to these bays more often. You can’t beat a good BBQ , they’re cheap, they save on the gas bottle at home and they’re so tasty and filling in beautiful surroundings! As it happens, the day after this we went on another BBQ trip, this time with friends, but a blog post about that will be coming later!

While we were eating we heard thunder rumbling over Fethiye and huge grey clouds sweeping across Calis – heavy thunderstorms were forecast but luckily we only felt a few drops of rain.

Our next stop of the day was the hill over-looking Fethiye . It’s known as ‘hill of the lovers’. It was really cloudy by this point, so the view wasn’t as spectacular as normal, but it was still impressive. I’ve written about this place in a blog post before, click HERE to see an unedited panoramic view from the top on a sunnier day!

At this point it was around 5pm and we decided to carry on our little adventure and drive to Kayaköy. We got a bit lost – but found it eventually and ended up parked up in a little farm place with a restaurant and gift shops surrounding it – I have no idea what it was called or if we were supposed to just park up and look at the animals, but that’s what we did. They had chickens, donkeys, a camel, horses, ponies and even a peacock, which I have never seen here in Turkey before. Anyone who knows me knows that I’m an animal lover so I couldn’t resist taking a ‘selfie’ with the donkey – he was really friendly and seemed to quite enjoy it haha!

We didn’t pay the fee to enter and walk around the old buildings – we have done before and would again if we had more time, but we just took photos from the outside. It’s quite eerie being there – it’s sad seeing all the empty, abandoned ruined homes, it’s a really interesting place to look around.

After all that driving around poor Berkay was really tired and had to go back to work at 8pm, so it was time to head home. We made one final stop on the way as we carried on driving along Calis beach into Koca Çalış. It was really quiet at that end of the beach – I’d never been that far along before.

After making it home, Berkay had a shower and got changed ready for work, then we both got back in the car to return it and walked back along the promenade just as the sun was setting through the clouds. You can’t beat a sunset on a cloudy day!

We had a really busy day and it was just great to be free to go anywhere we wanted in the car, a luxury we don’t normally have. We’re planning to rent a car once a month and do this more often so that we can do something different and see new places – Berkay is wanting to drive to Pamukkale one day but I’m not sure I trust him to get us all the way there in one piece without getting lost! We’re really determined to make the most of the few months we have together and do as much as possible rather than just sleep the days away like before.