Antalya. What a gem

For the first time since being away I actually slept through the night. No 3 hours awake dusting the night and no being awake for the call to prayer at 5 .30am. In fact Danny woke me at 8am. He is never awake before me!

We had a leisurely breakfast and it was good to be able to choose our own from the buffet rather than have it all laid out on the table before us, with a host watching us eat and to make sure we were trying everything. After organising some washing we took to the streets of Antalya. We are staying in the ancient city part which has almost been fully restored. There are a few ram shackled building but in the whole everything has been restored. The buildings are set in tiny cobbled lanes, all one way for cars and some too small for cars. Only residents cars, taxis and delivery vehicles are allowed in the city. During the day there are lots of tour groups going through but in the evening it’s mainly just tourist who are staying within the city. It’s quiet in the streets but the Anatalyans love a night club and also live music so there is always something blasting away.

We managed to take a self guided walking tour of the city. Well of course we would find a walking tour. Actually I found it in our Lonely Planet Guide Book. It was very good. We started at Hadrians Gate and continued through the town to the other side of the harbour. I can help thinking that Hadrian was a busy man building walls and gates all over the world. On the other side of town we had a late lunch at a restaurant looking over the harbour and then caught an escalator down to the harbour. Interestingly the elevator said it took 4 people or 360kgs. We got in with 6 to go down but there was such a line up to go up, 10 plus at a time were cramming in. We managed to find a very quaint museum telling the story of the Ottoman life and customs and attached to it was an old Greek church, now museum, that had an exhibition on animals on currency. I was really surprised to learn that Turkey once had elephants, hippos, bears, lions etc. I wonder which generation wiped them out. Maybe good old Hadrian???

Antalya has surprised us with its beauty and sophistication. It’s clean and really well kept. A lot of sensitive restoration has been achieved, and it’s just really beautiful. As we are really at the end of the holiday season there are very few people around and although the streets are really narrow it’s pretty easy to get around without getting too lost. Another surprising thing is that there are lots of pubs, many of which are English or Irish themed.

We managed to have dinner overlooking the very pretty harbour and I had the mixed grill which was up there with one of the best to date.

Tomorrow we are going on a tour of the waterfalls and also up the cable car. We tried to work out how to do it ourselves via local ferry but it just got too complicated. We will just have to play real tourists for the day.