2025 - Fall in Europe

There is no question that this part of my vacation - the road trip through eastern and southern Turkey has opened my eyes to, not only what a vast country this is with huge wilderness area, but also to its many contrasts.  The eastern part is much more conservative with restaurants serving no alcohol and women dressing much more conservatively than in the west.  Also, we drove through so many villages that looked like little had changed in them for decades, even centuries (other than vehicles).  It was nothing unexpected to drive around a corner and nearly bump into a flock of sheep or herd of goats being urged along by a man holding a staff or riding a donkey - and sometimes that was in the middle of a town.  Contrast that, with the very modern south coast resort cities and towns like Alanya, Antalya and Marmaris where foreign money has impacted the landscape and architecture.   Before I left home, I read some interesting facts about Turkey that I'd like t...

Over the past couple of weeks, several things happened that made us rethink our itinerary and make some changes to it.  First, Foca where we were going to spend the last couple of nights before I fly to Istanbul had some serious flash flooding and the town is still in "clean-up" mode.  So, that was removed from our stops.  Then, we realized how much driving this road trip has entailed - not that we didn't know it at the start - but it has been really tiring so Atahan wanted to change it up a bit.  Finally, he received some news that a friend of his was scheduled for surgery and he wanted to be closer to Izmir.  So, we added a two-day boat charter than would give me a different perspective by seeing the coast from the water and we replaced Foca with a couple days in Kusadasi (the main cruise port for visiting Ephesus) staying at a lovely hotel there.  So, with that, here is how the last few days have gone. We spend a night in Dalyan which was a favourite of ...

The last two days have involved long hours in the car as we've travelled from Eastern Turkey south to the Mediterranean coast.  It was truly a joy to see the sea again.  We stayed one night in Mersin in a hotel with views of the beach and last night was spent in Alanya, very much a beach resort city.  Actually, it was the first place I ever set foot in Turkey as it was a stop on an Azamara cruise about three years ago.  Our hotel was across from the beach and, after watching the sunset from my room, I headed down to the terrace to have dinner with Atahan.  It was about 25' and we had an enjoyable evening with great food.  The hotel was a bit quirky, however, as I had a bicycle hanging over my bed, there were "odd" signs all over and the hallway on my floor was lit bright red like some sort of bordello! Our delicious charcuterie board And yummy chips Leaving Alanya this morning, our destination was Sagalossos which was to be the last of our cultural/archaeol...