A quiet afternoon in Calis..

Posted on June 12, 2016 by livingtheturkishdream

Berkay works nights in summer so he sleeps most of the day and often wakes up mid-afternoon and goes for a stroll around Calis – he likes to send me lots of photos to make me jealous, which they certainly do!

The clear sky, the blue sea and the beautiful long promenade full of shops, bars and restaurants – they all look just as wonderful as ever, but definitely a lot quieter than usual.

There seems to be a lot less tourists visiting this year, which is sad to see. When I was there in April it appeared to be fairly ‘busy’ for the time of year, but numbers should be increasing the further into the season we get, and that doesn’t appear to be happening. Since it opened a month ago, the hotel Berkay works in hasn’t had more than 30 customers in per night, and it’s been more like 15 on average! For whatever reasons, fear of terrorism, negative media representation or perhaps just the price of flights, a lot of resorts seem to be quieter than normal and we can only hope that things improve once the school holidays start in the UK as July and August are always the months with highest tourist numbers.

On his walk, Berkay walked all the way from the start of the promenade, outside the lovely sea front apartments we stayed in in April, to the main part where all the restaurants are. He then walked down the road where the canal runs, to where the water taxis go back and forth to Fethiye – these 30minute mini-boat trips always go down a treat, it makes a nice change from the dolmus and is much more relaxing.

I love how the multi-coloured umbrellas look on the beach, they really stand out against the blue of the sky, I wonder if they were inspired by the famous floating multicoloured umbrellas in Fethiye? It is sad to see it so empty though, the beach should be full of sunbathers, not only a handful.

I really hope that the season picks up and everyone visiting the area makes the trip to Calis and sees how peaceful and beautiful it is. It’s always a lot quieter than the other main resorts in the area, not as loud as Oludeniz and Hisaronu, but just a short dolmus ride away. It’s really beautiful with a lot of picture perfect scenery, a huge array of delicious restaurants and who could forget those amazing sunsets.

You just can’t beat it, even if I am biased!

Reminiscing – Calis 2010

Posted on October 25, 2015 by livingtheturkishdream

I’ve been looking back at old photos recently and reminiscing on ‘the good old days’. Although my first visit to Calis was only in 2010, a lot has changed in the past 5 years, and yet still so much stays the same.

I was on holiday in Calis staying in a hotel Berkay worked in, and it’s so funny now looking back on photos I took around that time, totally unaware how things would pan out in the future. It was Grand Vizon hotel in Calis where I stayed, and where we met. I remember sitting on the balcony taking photos of our view over the pool just to remember the place by – little did I know I’d end up living around the corner to this hotel for 3 years, or be walking around the hotel grounds in winter playing fetch with our dog, Boncuk, or having weekly winter BBQ’s with Berkay, sat next to the empty pool long after the tourists had gone home and the summer season finished.

It’s also funny to think that one of the other waiters who worked in the hotel when I met Berkay would become one of our best friends and that I’d be sitting in the house of him and his wife every week for tea and biscuits and playing with their baby son!

Whilst some things have changed, some things never do. This photo of me walking down the road leading to the hotel just sums me up perfectly… animal mad, ever so slightly crazy cat lady. This was taken just on a daytime stroll back to the hotel, where I seemed to attract a small army of kittens. 5 years on this still happens – if there’s a stray cat or dog somewhere I’ll normally end up sat on the floor playing with it! I still do this now in England on my way to work, there’s a cat who wanders around the bottom of our road and on my way to the train station everyday if I see him I stop and talk to him (yes, talk) in fact, I even missed my train once because I stopped to stroke this cat…

Calis itself is of course just as beautiful as ever, apart from a lick of paint on the umbrellas which are now multicoloured, the wide uncrowded beach, the gentle waves of the sea and the backdrop of Babadağ mountain remains much the same. Tourists still come and go every summer and thousands of people fall in love with the place every year.

I wonder how many other tourists like me have sat their bottoms on the stoney beach of Calis and not realised how much the place would change their lives? Or not realised that the place they were visiting for a week’s holiday would turn into a place they’d call home? Do you have any stories of how this place changed you forever?

A Drive around the Fethiye Peninsula

Posted on July 13, 2015 by livingtheturkishdream

The Fethiye penisula is a beautiful place to drive around, with stunning panoramic views of Fethiye, Çalis, Şövalye Island and the Mediterranean sea.

While I was over there in April and we had a rental car, we took full advantage and drove around after a BBQ at Aksazlar koyu. It was a beautiful sunny day, and we had Boncuk with us so off we went, windows open, ears flapping and tongues out, cruising along the single, circular road.

We passed Aksazlar koyu and the huge private hillside resort of Letoonia and pulled over the car at one of the many popular look out points. There were a few cars there, people on scooters, mopeds, quadbikes, some had wandered down the cliff slightly and were sat among the trees eating sunflower seeds, while others, like us, just stopped to take in the views and enjoy the tranquility.

You can never quite capture the moment through a camera lens, you have to be there to appreciate just how beautiful the views are – to the right, Babadağ mountain makes a wonderful backdrop to the green trees, red roofed houses and sails of boats in Fethiye harbour, and to the left, views across the water to Calis and it’s beach.

We got back in the car and carried on driving, but not for long before we had another ‘photo’ stop, if you do drive along here you’ll know exactly what I mean when I say you’ll want to stop every 5 minutes because at every turn you’re greeted with a different, stunning view. Along the way around you come across and go past several little bays, Küçük Samanlık Koyu, Büyük Samanlık Koyu, Boncuklu koyu and Kuleli to name a few – plenty of places to drive to and stop for a drink and a dip in the sea, we often go to these bays with our friends for picnics and the calm, sheltered water makes them ideal for children swimming and paddling.

We bypassed them all and just drove. As you get further around the hillside, the drive does became a bit..hairy. Narrow road, pot holes, bumps and falling rocks. It’s quite nervy when you’re in the passenger seat and all you can see to the right out of your window is a steep drop down to rocks and the deep, blue sea, I definitely wouldn’t recommend doing the drive at night, we did once, at twilight, and the road isn’t lit at all…eek!

I could just pack up the car with a picnic blanket, food, book, music and sit and look at the views for hours. Calm blue sea, sailing boats, crickets chirping – pure serenity.

You can’t beat the feeling you get when you pull up in the car, get out and stand at the edge overlooking the place we all love, standing next to strangers admiring the same view, and give each other that knowing look – ‘we are so lucky.’

Berkay’s birthday, rescuing puppies and cake..

Posted on February 1, 2015 by livingtheturkishdream

Back in December it was Berkay’s 24th birthday, it fell on the day before I was due to fly back to the UK.
He had arranged to have a half day at work, so we got to spend the afternoon and evening together. I woke up early to make him a special Turkish breakfast – eggs, cheese, bread, tomato, turkish sausage and çay, with balloons! I managed to hunt down a birthday card in Fethiye (why on earth are birthday cards SO expensive there?!) and Boncuk even wrote one for him herself, “to my human”.

Off Berkay went to work, and after a bit of packing I walked to the hotel to sit and have a few hours with Boncuk. Around lunchtime Berkay finished work and met us, we planned to take Boncuk out for long walk together but didn’t get far… 2 minutes down the road she stopped to sniff something in the grass, we went over to see and it was a tiny dog laying on a pile of twigs and rubbish, hardly moving. We tried to pick her up and see if she was ok but she yelped and wouldn’t stand…nobody knew who she belonged to, although a restaurant owner nearby said he had seen a truck dump her there the day before. We were really concerned about the poor dog and didn’t want to just leave her because she looked so sad and poorly, so we rang a local vet who we knew worked with street animals and provided treatment for them for free through the animal aid charity. We took her on the bus and she just laid on Berkay looking really scared and sad, I don’t know how anyone could dump her! The vet done some scans and xrays and found nothing much wrong, just a bit of fluid around her belly due to a dog bite which he cleaned up and disinfected, and a serious vitamin D deficiency which had resulting in the puppy’s legs being bowed, we suspect this is why she was dumped. Once he had treated the bite and given her some painkillers and vitamins we took her back, we couldn’t keep an eye on her ourselves as we had nowhere to keep her, so we asked a nearby cafe to watch her. I was worried they wouldn’t look after her but we went back a few hours later and they had given her a box with a tshirt in, a blanket, food and water. The best part was that someone else had seen her, fallen in love and arranged to pick her up in a couple of days! That was our good deed of the day done.

By the time we got home and I finished packing a few more bits, it was time to get ready and leave for the restaurant we had booked – Mancero. We got dressed up, hopped on the dolmus and went. We got off wayyyyy too early by accident, but it turned out well as it meant we could admire the beautiful view just after the sun had gone down. We walked along the promenade and the sea looked absolutely stunning with the yellow, orange and blue tint of the sky, a few fishing boats were out which looked lovely in the foreground with the multicoloured horizon behind.

We had a lovely dinner in Mancero, but I’ll write about that in another post! Then we headed back to Calis and to Hüner cafe, where we’d arranged to meet friends for some birthday cake.

Funny story about the cake.. Berkay rang up to order it, then I told him to ring them back and ask for it to say ‘happy birthday askim’…as if I had arranged it for him… because I thought it was cute but didn’t know how to ask them myself…hahaha poor Berkay ordering his own cake eh? It was delicious and we had good company, including our two best friends and their twin boys… Adorable… look at the teddy bear bums!

I love these photos of us, we look so happy.

We had a lovely evening, although there was a very sad atmosphere lingering over us knowing it was our last evening together… It’s funny looking back at these photos knowing it was 7 weeks ago! It doesn’t feel like that long ago, yet it does feel like years ago at the same time!

A sunset silhouette..

Posted on January 19, 2015 by livingtheturkishdream

Taking a stroll along Fethiye promenade is always a pleasant experience but there’s no better time than at sunset.

On the evening of Berkays birthday back in December we went to Mancero restaurant and got off the bus far earlier than we needed to so that we could take a long walk and admire the views on the way, it was a little chilly but we didn’t mind.

The sun had already set but the sky was still lit up with a red and orange glow. Of course my camera was firmly in my hand ready to point and shoot… I spotted some people fishing along the pavement and thought they would look good as silhouettes against the red of the sky and the beautiful horizon in the distance.

This is the resulting photograph… and it’s totally unedited – it really did look that beautiful and I captured the scene perfectly on camera.

You just can’t beat a good Fethiye sunset.

Winter Sunsets in Calis..

Posted on December 7, 2014 by livingtheturkishdream

Winter is the best time for beautiful sunsets here in Calis, the sun goes down right on the horizon over the sea rather than behind the mountains as it does in summer.

I hadn’t had a chance to watch the sunset for a few weeks, so last weekend while Berkay was working I took myself off to the beach just before sundown and sat alone armed with my camera. It was so peaceful, there was hardly anyone around apart from 2 people fishing, myself and a couple of roaming dogs.

I wasn’t disappointed by the sunset I witnessed, it was a little cloudy but as I always say, cloudy days make the best sunsets – the way the sun reflects off the clouds and turns the whole sky an orange-red is beautiful.

A remarkable case of being in the right place at the right time meant this boat appeared to float right along the horizon as the sun set, creating an even more magical, peaceful scene. I think its one of the best sunset photos I have ever taken!

It’s really strange to think that 5 months ago I’d go and sit and watch the sun go down around 8.45pm and now it sets at least 4 hours earlier than that – it’s a reminder of how quickly the time passes.

I posted these photos on my blog Facebook page last week, but realised that anyone who doesn’t have access to that will not have seen them so I decided to post them here too. Please don’t forget to go over and like my page so you don’t miss out, I post photo’s there almost daily. www.facebook.com/livingtheturkishdream

Türk Yıldızları – Turkish Stars visit Fethiye!

Posted on October 28, 2014 by livingtheturkishdream

On Saturday I was lucky enough to witness the Türk Yıldızları (Turkish Stars) in action- the fighter jet aerobatic display team of the Turkish air force. It was an amazing experience. Anyone who has friends in Calis or Fethiye is likely to have seen their Facebook feeds full of photos and videos from the event, which shows how impressive their performance was, and how proud the Turkish people are of their military.

The Turkish Stars were scheduled to do their display here in Calis as part of the Ölüdeniz air games that took place all last week. On Thursday they briefly flew over Ölüdeniz, Calis and Fethiye a few times to say ‘hello’, I wasn’t expecting it so when I heard the roaring engines of the low flying planes it was quite scary, it sounded like World War III was about to start! I went to stand on the balcony and got a few glimpses of the planes flying past and realised what they were. Berkay was in bed at the time and slept through it all, didn’t even move a muscle, typical man! They were due to do a practice of the display on Friday but bad weather meant it was cancelled, which left us all wondering if everything would go ahead as planned on Saturday.

Saturday came and the rain still fell. The rain, thunder, lightening and strong winds carried on all morning and by 1pm in the afternoon it looked like the display would be cancelled as it would obviously be unsafe to fly in such conditions. I, and many others, were constantly checking the Türk Yıldızları Facebook page for confirmation and they issued a statement saying they planned to take off from Dalaman at 15.30pm weather permitting…

We heard nothing more official announced, but the rain finally stopped at 3pm so we headed to the beach in hope that it might still go ahead. When we got to the promenade I was amazed by the amount of people that were already waiting, even though the weather was dodgy. We picked a spot on the wall along the beach and sat down patiently waiting. It got busier and busier and as we looked down the beach in both directions it was absolutely packed full of people, very unusual for the end of October! I honestly have not seen Calis Beach so busy all season, even in the height of summer, and it was really lovely to see it so full of people, even restaurants and cafe’s that had closed for the season had reopened especially for the occasion.

4pm came and the atmosphere was buzzing, a couple of powered-paragliders had flown up and down the beach draping huge Turkish flags below them which got the crowd excited for what was to come. We waited, and waited, and at around 4.15pm people started excitedly pointing at the horzion, where trails of red and white smoke could be seen – it was them, the Türk Yıldızları were flying towards Calis at high speed. I quickly grabbed my camera and iPod – one in each hand, one for filming, one for photos.

They got closer and closer and flew over our heads, there were 6 planes in total, and boy were they noisy. Berkay looked straight at me and said ‘Danni, how didn’t I wake up when they were here the other day?!’.

The display was absolutely brilliant, they perfomed amazing stunts, the pilots are among the best in the world and very talented. They flew perfectly synchnoised with each other, doing twists, turns and corkscrew spirals, even flying upside down – it was making me feel dizzy just watching! Aren’t the planes just beautiful with the Turkish flag underneath?

It was difficult to take photos, videos and watch it in real time, so I ended up just pointing my camera up to the skies and clicking, not checking that anything was actually in the frame. I ended up getting some pretty good photos which capture the display well. The clouds added to the dramatic scenes and made it look even more impressive. I edited over 30 minutes worth of video clips into a 2 minute 40 second video which you can watch here: https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=756223634439508 I’m quite proud of how well it turned out, considering it was only filmed with my iPod while multitasking! You definitely need to watch it with the sound turned up to get the full experience.

Around 40 minutes after they started, the display ended and off the Türk Yıldızları flew back to Dalaman. The crowd was buzzing. We went and sat down in a cafe to soak up the atmosphere for a little longer and relaxed with an Efes and an iced coffee – perfect. The clouds cleared and the sun came out. We saw a lot of people walking past with Türk Yıldızları merchandise and decided to head in the direction they were coming from to see if we could buy anything for ourselves. We found a tiny trailer where a few members of the Türk Yıldızları team were selling hats, shirts, pens, lighters, bags etc all at reasonable prices. It was very popular, a large crowd of people were surrounding them and their stock was selling out quickly. Berkay purchased a cap, which he got signed by one of the team, and I got a pen and a magnet, as I seem to have started a little collection of those on my fridge. We wanted to buy a tshirt but didn’t have enough cash, so Berkay asked them to save us a couple as he ran off to the ATM, 15 minutes later he came back but it was too late as the shirts had been sold and the little shop was closing up as the stock had all gone! It was disappointing but maybe a blessing in disguise as I think we were just buying things for the sake of it!

As we were walking back home, we met a couple more of the Türk Yıldızları team, First Lieutenant Selim Şensoy and Senior Master Sergeant Ibrahim Çetinkaya, who were happy to pose for photos with us!

Overall it was a brilliant day, the atmosphere along Calis beach was really special and it was lovely to see families having a day out together and both local people and tourists sharing in the experience, a perfect end to the summer season here.

Bravo, Türk Yıldızları & thank you for coming to Fethiye!

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Sarigerme beach..

Posted on October 22, 2014 by livingtheturkishdream

A couple of weeks ago we hired a car again (for the 6th time this summer!) and just drove. We didn’t really have a plan, we considered going to Dalyan but when we saw the signpost for Sarigerme, we decided to go there instead.

I’d heard of Sarigerme before but never actually been, I knew there was a beach and some fancy all inclusive hotels, but had never looked into it further as I’d never planned to visit. We followed the signpost and drove for about 20 minutes, getting further and further into small villages and farm land, often getting stuck behind tractors. There were beautiful orange tree orchards on either side of the road for as far as I could see – quite impressive! Eventually we arrived at a small town, which I now know to be the main area of the resort. We asked for directions to the beach, and drove straight down a road where we arrived at a small cabin with a sign outside stating they charged a fee for entry to the beach (which goes towards maintaining it). Now, we’re cheapskates, and if we can find a cheaper alternative we will. Berkay spoke to the lady and said we only wanted to drive to the car park to take a photo, turn around and come back, so she took a note of the numberplate and let us in for free. We stuck to our promise and literally only stayed for 10 minutes – we got out of the car, walked along the first section of the beach, took a photo and left. I wish we could have spent more time there and I do hope to go back again because it was just so beautiful, I was really very pleasantly surprised!

The impression I got was that this area was a sort of hidden gem, I don’t think many people holidaying in the Fethiye area will have heard of Sarigerme and probably never been there, just as I hadn’t. It definitely seemed very quiet when we were there, but this was at the beginning of October so that’s not too surprising.

I researched the area online and found that Sarigerme is actually the name of the beach, not the small neigbhourhood close by. The neighbourhood is actually called Osmaniye, but is listed under the beach name in the holiday brochures – it is very small, so small it recently lost its ‘village’ status! The resort is near Dalaman, just a 20 minute drive to the airport. and is home to 8 large, 5* all inclusive hotels such as ‘Holiday Village’ and ‘Hilton resort and spa’ who work with travel agents such as First Choice and Thomson. These massive all inclusive hotels are my idea of hell honestly, I think it’s so sad that these hotel grounds are so large and have so many pools, restaurants, bars, spas and entertainment options that the people holidaying in them will never experience the real Turkey, or see anything more of the country than the mountains in the distance past the grounds gates. Perhaps this explains why the beach was so empty?

I definitely wouldn’t want to use Sarigerme as a base for a holiday as there really isn’t much to do at all, there is a small town which consists of one road lined with a few restaurants and shops selling the usual ‘genuine fakes’, and obviously the beautiful beach is just a 20 minute stroll away which offers watersports. I suppose it would be perfect for people wanting to centre their holiday around an all inclusive luxury hotel within easy reach of the beach. I read that a few of the hotels have private spots on the beach so that would be a big plus too, along with the very short transfer time from Dalaman airport. Towns such as Marmaris, Fethiye, Dalyan and Ortaca are reachable from the resort, and I saw advertisements for excursions to all of these places.

I would definitely recommend a day trip to Sarigerme just for the beach, because it was absolutely beautiful. There are very few sandy beaches in this area of Turkey; Marmaris, Icmeler, Calis and even Olu Deniz beaches are all stony. This beach was lovely with 7km of soft golden sand and the blue, calm sea. There was also another section of sea water slightly inland and labelled as a ‘pool safe for children’, there was even a lifeguard on duty which is rare here. I was so tempted to go in for a swim because it looked so inviting! If the weather is still nice next week I think we’ll go back here, pay the entrance fee and spend a little longer exploring, even if it’s too cold for swim you can’t beat a good walk along a sandy beach. How romantic!

Home Sweet Home…

Posted on September 25, 2014 by livingtheturkishdream

I’ve been living here for nearly 4 months now, how did the time go so quickly?! Last year I wrote a post about our old apartment (click HERE to read that) and I thought I’d do the same for this one. If you’re nosey, you’ll enjoy it, and if nothing else it’s nice for me to look back on later on! (:

We rent and live in a fairly typical Turkish apartment, we pay 550tl a month (roughly £160 at today’s rate), it’s nothing special and I think we are definitely paying a little too much rent for what it is, but I guess what we really pay for is location.

Our last apartment was a 20 minute walk to any other civilisation, no shops, no bus route, just a farm and our neighbours. This time we’re living near the sea, about 150 meters and less than a minutes walk to the beach, which I like. Although I loved living further out in Calis away from the busy parts and hotels, I did feel a little isolated. I never went out without Berkay as I didn’t like walking down the busy main road that ran past the house (it’s the main road to Calis from Dalaman so it was always very busy and difficult to cross). Now I’m able to leave the house, walk along the seafront, go to our friends house or even just walk 10 seconds and go to the corner shop for bread instead of the 20 minute one way walk previously. We’re at the quieter end of Calis just behind Guven’s restaurant so we still avoid a lot of the noise, it’s really the best of both worlds.

Our apartment is in a block of 10, and most of my neighbours are Turkish. It was 2 and a half months before I realised that one of my neighbours was actually English, I was wondering why I could hear English music and TV shows and one day it suddenly clicked! I’ve since found out that I have another English neighbour as well, but although I’ve been here 4 months and they live directly underneath me, I’ve not spoken a word to either of them!

Our apartment only has one bedroom, it’s fairly small but has massive wardrobes which we never had in our old house, so that’s a big bonus. It’s a very basic bedroom, wardrobe, chest of drawers, bed, mirror and fan. This fan has been on constantly since we moved in, the poor thing gave up recently so we had to buy a new one! We haven’t been sleeping with a duvet, just my blanket although we have pulled the duvet out of the cupboard this week as it’s been getting chilly! You may notice I’m a bit of a big kid, my blanket has Tinkerbell on it and I have a little soft toy army! I’m a sucker for teddy bears and soft toys, see that frog on my pillow? I can’t sleep without him!

Next to the bedroom is the bathroom/wetroom. I’ve had an argument with this room recently after slipping on the floor after a shower and badly bruising my elbow and grazing my foot and wrist! These things are so dangerous but I guess it’s much cheaper to have a wet room rather than installing a shower cubicle, and having a bath is definitely rare in Turkish houses, if you’ve got one of those, you know you’re doing well!

Further down the hallway is the kitchen, which is really tiny. Our landlord got us a new fridge after we moved in and when they brought it upstairs I was amazed it actually fit in, it takes up half the width of the room! It’s a basic kitchen, there are no fancy appliances, no dishwasher, no oven, no microwave, just 3 gas rings, a mini oven and an ancient washing machine. Surprisingly we bought the current gas bottle when we first move here and haven’t replaced it yet, one day I know I’m going to be in the middle of cooking dinner and it will run out… all part of the fun of living here (; Note the cupboards, these are the infamous ‘Turkish cupboards’ that are part of everyone’s houses..well maybe not everyone’s, but they are definitely very common, must be the cheapest version they sell!

The only other room in the apartment is the living room, where I spend every evening glued to my laptop and writing my blog! This room has an abundance of chairs as you may notice, two 3-seater sofas and 4 armchairs, and there were also 5 wooden chairs in here but we managed to give them back to the landlord. Seriously, who needs that many chairs, considering it’s a one bedroom apartment? I guess it’s for those sociable Turkish people who like to have the world and it’s mother around for cay everynight, we however, are not those type of people…

We actually have a TV in this house, which Berkay is very grateful for! He’d watch it every waking hour if he could, it drives me mad, Turkish ‘soaps’ are so bad, they make Eastenders look like an Oscar winning film! My favourite thing in the room is the cabinet in the corner with a few of our photos and Berkay’s diploma proudly displayed in it.

The thing I hate most about this room is that rug on the floor…. it’ lime green with an orange and purple clown on it… who buys these things? I’m not afraid of clowns and this one is quite cute, but it still creeps me out a little, I considered rolling it up and putting it out of sight but I’m a little too afraid of it… so it just sits there, at least it’s unique I suppose, I bet you’ve never seen a rug like this before?

We have two small balconies, one off the bedroom which we only use for drying clothes outside, and one off the living room which is where we sit and eat or play backgammon, our favourite things to do (; It’s nice out there, but it’s on a street where there are two hotels and a shop, so there are usually people or cars driving past which means it’s not very private. I love sitting out there being nosey though, I used to sit there every evening during Ramadan and listen for the call to prayer and cannon fire at sundown, lovely.

That’s all, it’s nothing special but it is our home, for now at least. When I first moved in here, I always wanted to be out and about doing something, I didn’t want to be sat at home. I realised that the reason I didn’t want to be inside too often was because I didn’t want to get too attached to this house, like our last one, as it’s just too heartbreaking when I have to leave it and go back to England. After 4 months, it was inevitable that this house would feel like home and now there’s nothing I like more than sitting on the balcony with Berkay playing backgammon and watching the world go by… Oh well, only another 5-6 weeks here then back to England for the foreseeable future… but for now, this is home.

Ölüdeniz from above!

Posted on September 23, 2014 by livingtheturkishdream

Two weeks ago we decided to go for a long walk up part of the mountain overlooking Ölüdeniz . The path we took forms part of the ‘Lycian Way’ – a 540km long walking trail between Ölüdeniz and Antalya.

We got on the dolmus near the otogar in Fethiye, and what an experience that was. I’d never seen a dolmus so full! 3 drove past us completely full to the brim before we managed to squeeze (literally) onto the next one. It was a horrible journey – far too many people which made me feel quite claustrophobic, I’m so glad the Calis-Fethiye dolmus’ are rarely like that! We got off the bus on the road down to Ölüdeniz near Montana Pine resort and crossed the road.

This was the part of the walk that I struggled with most and this wasn’t even part of the trail! It was fairly steep uphill and not shady at all which made it quite difficult. I’d hate to be staying there, although Berkay used to work there (I swear there’s not many places he hasn’t worked…) and says they have a free shuttle bus, presumably for that reason! We reached Montana Pine resort hotel around 5-10 minutes later and saw the archway signifying the start of the ‘Lycian Way’.

We followed the road and had our first glimpse of the sea through the beautiful pine trees that cover the area. After a while the road split into two, one which headed down to another hotel, and one which was a more narrow road leading through the trees along the mountain side. It became more shady here which was a real bonus, and being quite high up from ground level meant temperatures were very slightly cooler too.

Every so often we’d get another glimpse of the sea and beach through the trees and realise how high up we were going, the further we walked, the further around the mountain we got and we were able to see more of the lagoon which looked beautiful. I kept stopping to take photos because everytime there was a break in the trees, we got an even better view! We stopped after around 15 minutes of walking and sat down to eat some of the watermelon we’d carried along with us (don’t ask!) It was actually really refreshing and juicy, just what we needed. Apparently we weren’t the only watermelon fans as lots of bees/wasps decided to come and join us for some as well. Ugh. I have a somewhat irrational fear of wasps/bees, I’ve never once been bitten but cannot cope with having one within a meter of me without wanting to cry! Needless to say, I didn’t sit down enjoying the watermelon for long and ended up standing flapping around instead, much to Berkay’s annoyance!

We walked a little further and stepped off the main path towards an area on the right-hand side which had a few little sheep shacks made out of sticks.

We couldn’t see the beach at this point, so we climbed a few rocks and down the other side where this view greeted us. Wow

I think this may be the look-out point that is quite well known, but I could be wrong. We were standing on the mountain edge, surrounded by trees and rocks, one that seemed to have formed a bench – a perfect place to sit and admire the view. It was obviously a popular place to stop as there was litter around, cigarette packets, bottles, crisp packets – quite sad really. We had the entire place to ourselves and didn’t see anyone for miles, just us, bees, birds and butterflies. Lovely.

We had a breathtaking view of the lagoon from this angle too. The boats looked so beautiful on the other side and the mountains behind the lagoon made for an even more beautiful backdrop. I just couldn’t stop taking photos! It’s amazing how blue the sea really looks here, the colour of these photos isn’t altered in any way, the sea really is that colour.

To be honest, I’m not a big fan of Ölüdeniz , I have always thought it looks absolutely beautiful from above when I see people’s paragliding photos, but when you’re standing down on the ground, it’s not that special and I always felt a bit disappointed, so it was great to see it from above for myself for the first time. Very impressive.

I would have loved to have carried on walking a bit further up the mountain to get even better views, but we had limited time and Berkay had come off a night shift and was very tired, so after admiring the view from this point for a while, we headed back on the path down towards Montana Pine again. It was a much easier walk downhill, although it wasn’t particularly hard going up either, and it only took around 25 minutes to get back to the main road where we hopped on the dolmus (an empty one this time, thank goodness) and headed back to Fethiye.

It was a lovely walk and I really recommend it for the photo opportunities. You can go as high as you wish, but be mindful that the walk does get a lot harder the further up you go, and I definitely wouldn’t recommend it in the height of summer. Now would be a perfect time to go as the days are getting a little cooler. I wouldn’t advise going after 4pm at the moment as once the sun goes down around 6.45pm it gets dark very quickly and there are no lights whatsoever along the path we took. If you’re in the area and feel like doing something different, definitely check it out. You most definitely will not be disappointed by the views!

I’m so glad we went. We’re always looking for things to do that are free, or cheap, and this only cost us the bus fare so it was perfect. Sometimes you just can’t beat a nice walk with amazing views like this, it’s so easy to take our surroundings for granted but when you see them from a whole new angle it’s a real eye-opener and a great reminder of how beautiful Turkey really is.