Day Two

Wednesday was overcast, breezy and cool. About 25C I'd guess. This is what it looked like when I got up:

Day One

We slept in late the first day before going down to the pool area for some breakfast and generally taking it easy. Here is the view from our apartment. The big rock is Babadag Mountain, which is where the paragliders jump off.

Later in the afternoon we took our first trip into Hisaronu. It is impossible to miss, but we managed to almost get lost after taking some wrong turns. It's just down the hill.

We looked around the town for a bit, getting to know the place. It generally looks a bit like this during the day:

There are loads of restaurants, tourist shops, barbers, jewellers and travel agents. They'll all try to get you into their business but they were never aggressive. It was nice to see that amongst the usual tourist tat there was actually some nice stuff for sale. In particular, the area seems to be important for the jewellery trade and there are some posh shops in the town. Therre also some small supermarkets. One is called Azda (yes, really), and another is Morison. The people here seem to have a talen for giving English people a version of what they're used to.

The place is bustling all day but really come alive when the sun goes down:

We ended up eating at a restaurant called the Mariner's as it looked nice and had a good set menu.

If you really want to know, I had tomato soup (OK), stuffed trout (very nice), a lemon pancake (good), and some apple tea (nice). First drink was included in the price.

Yin had garlic mushrooms (mmm, mushroomy), sea bream (delicious), pancake and apple tea.

Our total bill, including two beers and a glass of wine, was about 48YTL. Considering we changed our money at the lowest rate it's been for months (2.05/£), that is around £23-£24, but would have been cheaper at current rates. Not bad, but we were actually expecting everything to be even cheaper. Can't complain though.

We spent a while in the town looking around and had a cocktail at La Cubana which you can just see in a picture above. It was 10YTL for a cocktail, but we were on holiday and a band was playing. You can get cocktails in Hisaronu for 5YTL but that's the cheapest I saw all week.

Yin's Favourite thing today:

discovering apple tea; dinner.

My Favourite thing today:

Dinner

Advice from a fool:


Don't buy anything or look like you want to buy anything until you have spent some time getting to know the place and the prices of things. I don't want to talk about that any more.

In the Beginning

We arrived at Dalaman airport on our Onur Air flight on time (very basic, no frills flight) to be met by our private transfer service.

One of the advantages of booking the apartment separately to the flights is that Jasmine Garden arrange for a driver to collect you so you don't have to get on a packed coach and meet the holiday reps. You also don't have to go round all the apartments dropping people off, so it's a much shorter journey.

We shared the trip with another couple in a nice air-conditioned Mercedes with a fresh bottle of cold water. The drive took about 40 minutes and we were greeted by the owners for check in. Jasmine Garden is obviously a family business, and it was the parents of Erkan, our contact, who met us.

(To explain: Erkan is the one who responds to all emails and he has perfect English. If you ever contact Jasmine it would be him that you are in touch with. He also works at the apartments on the bar and reception, and generally being helpful.)

Introduction

Hello!

I thought I'd start a blog of our trip to Turkey rather than just send everyone photos. This way, it will work more like a travel journal than a boring photo album. Also, there will be a few travel tips and observations so readers can learn from our (brief) experience.

Let's get on with it...

Yin and I visited a mountainous area of Turkey centred around Hisaronu, Olu Deniz and Fethiye. This is near to the Mediterranean coast in the South West of the country. (See it on the map http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?hl=en&tab=wl)

We stayed just up the road from Hisaronu at Jasmine Garden apartments (http://jasminegardenapartments.com/) which we booked directly rather than through the agent, Goldtrail. Read on for our verdict...