Tag: Turkiye

Literally! We had another sirocco storm last night, which temporarily took out the leccy. I know that because it switched the aircon off and I woke drenched in sweat!

Getting up this morn, we were greeted by the sight or rather the lack of, of the top of the Babadag Mountain, which is partially obscured by haze. As is the bottom of the normally crystal clear swimming pool. I think it must have been a dust storm as well last night.

They’ve had the Babadag cable car closed for the last few days due to the high winds, and there are definitely no signs of anyone paragliding at present. You’d have to be even more bonkers than normal to give that a go at present, as we suspect anyone trying to launch would immediately find themselves on the back side of the mountain heading down towards Antalya at a rapid rate of knots.

At midday, it was a marginally cooler 38C, with todays temps peaking at 40C by mid afternoon. Still no sign of water, but reserves still reasonable so no real impact again.

It does make you realise how much water you can avoid using with a little planning & thought. Storing & then using grey water for flushing, being one of the more obvious ones, put the plug in when you shower & save that for the loo, or dipping toothpaste-laden toothbrush into a small cup of drinking water, and then using that to rinse, rather than being one of those weirdos that has the tap running for the whole time teeth are being cleaned?!

Todays brunch selection was a variety classic. “Ham-like slices”, vine-ripened tomato, Wensleydale cheese & lovely bread. Seven possible classic sandwich topping combinations on one plate!

Just before we headed down to the pool, I clocked the fellas working on the development that’s going on down the hill from us. I believe there’s a rule that limits construction work when it’s ‘tourist season’, but these lads are like the SAS of construction. They sneak in, work tirelessly and relentlessly, almost invisibly, and put a shift in. Good grief, they put a shift in! Bravo, fellas! Bravo!

In the following photo, the grey house on the right looked like the house on the left on Friday afternoon. It’s now fully ‘first coat’ rendered on all sides. Workforce? Two fellas on the scaffolding, one mixing & then throwing the wet mix up to his mate, who then applied it to the brickwork. Heavy going, right? Especially as it’s been 40-46C and no cooler than 34C whilst they’ve been working!

Jane & I headed to the pool, where we both had a cooling dip, but then split – Jane sunbathing, and me swimming around and clearing the more obvious detritus from the pool.

Done, and then the same pattern as yesterday, despite the big drop-off in temps today (only 40C at this point), with 20/30 mins of lying in the sun, then a dip required.

Definitely some dust in the air by the way. Both Jane & I had sniffles and sneezes in the earlier part of the day, but that tailed off as the day wore on and it was visibly clearer up the top of Babadag by this point. And I said that, after what those builders are up to! What a wuss!

Back up to the apartment, and military planning of the low, but at least existent flow of water. Jane plus long hair first. Then Lurchio, so he has time to do his hair. Then the hairless one.

All washed & fresh, we did ‘the dance’. You know, the one that goes “what we doing then? What does anyone fancy?”. That’s then followed by a five minute shout out to places we could go, but all without commitment. That’s followed by a repeat of the first question. Then eventually we go with the initially suggested placez. All good, just after the ‘dance’. I’m a short dancer the older I get – “here’s what I want to do, which I think you will all like”.

We dolmused (bussed) it down into Hisaronu and walked down to Hidden Gem Restaurant. It’s top notch food (again, see last years blog for details) with really welcoming service.

Had a bit of a chinwag with the fella who seemed to be the owner, or al least in charge. “Yes, quieter. But picking up. Just worried about fires now, as if we had one here, well…”. Not quite comic timing, but as that sentence ended a fire truck sirened its way past the end of the street.

Moving on! Jane got all “Lairy Airey” again with her one solitary drink of the evening, a frozen strawberry daiquiri (seemingly her version of mothers ruin). I’d love to tell you the angle is making it look bigger/her smaller, but it did seem to be twice the size of her head…

Lurchio hit the Corona again, and I risked the least bad choice and had Efes Pilsner, which I may live to regret. I’ve a feeling they use half brewers yeast and half laxative in the brewing process.

Food-wise, it was easy. “Ballon bread and mixed mezze to start and uç (as in rabbit hutch but I only thought that and didn’t say it out loud), lamb chop, please”.

What a cracking spread! The mezze was lovely (I do like a bit of non-pickled beetroot) and the lamb chops were divine!

No apologies for food pictures incoming:

Cooked & seasoned perfectly, in my humble…

Even the ‘chips’ were more like roast potatoes, which is a good thing. Jane wasn’t overly impressed by her sprout-biased selection of veg, but we worked around that & I did the decent thing and ate a few.

Bill paid, we headed back towards the top end where the dolmas & taxi rank is. Which just so happens to be next to a chemist.

What to do…pay £14 for a 2 month supply of Lisinopril (I’m old, fat and as such have high blood pressure) back home or buy a 6 month supply of the same for 175Tlr – divide that by 34 to see the Sterling price.

Drug dealing over, we headed home on the dolmus. 45Tl (£1.32 for 3) later we headed back up the hill & settled in on the balcony.

Well, we tried! Holy moley! The winds had picked up and boy was it exciting out there! The chairs (and anything else loose) we’re taken in! Big gusts that rattled the glass panes, and the scaffolding on the houses on the site below!

And so there ended todays instalment of nonsense!

Much love to the berks reading this!

Chris

X

Well, another day where we only end up surfacing at late morning. And even that is only because we want to give the aircon units a bit of respite!

We had a big windstorm last night! Throughout the night we had Sirocco-like blasts of hot air totally unlike those Jane has become accustomed to. So much so, that I think we’ll take the patio chairs inside tonight, given Lurchios got blown from his balcony door onto the glass balustrade. Don’t tell our hosts, but he also forgot to Velcro a seat pad to his chair. Thankfully that was retrieved from to pool first thing, suffering from a mild bout of PTSD.

May as well get this out of the way. Todays morning “sit-rep” (situation report):

1. Water? It’s on sometimes and it’s off sometimes. Shlick happens.

2. Heat? Predicted 45+ degC so it’s going to be “hotter than a snakes ass in a wagon rut”, according to Adrian Cronauer.

This is likely going to be a short one, as tbh, when it’s 46C in the shade, there’s not a lot of energy left to do much more than sit/lie there. Even I have levels of mundane that I won’t stoop to write up!

Eventually, after our now traditional brunch, Jane & I headed to the pool. Separately. I was around 30 minutes behind as I’d found a dodgy stream to watch the Yokohama F Marinos play Man City in a pre-season friendly. First thing I learned? They aren’t the sheep-wool Marinos [sic] – it’s pronounced any other way you like other than like Merino wool. We won 5-3, after Big Erl (Haaland) ended a 6 minute goal drought.

First thing to do on my pool arrival was to don the goggles and fish out all the stuff that had blown in overnight, which apart from that cushion had nowt to do with us. Leaves, pine-like needles, a paper takeaway bag with mushy receipts (- I’d have delivered it back if I could have read it!).

After which, it was time for a Takeshi Castle type challenge – grease up with suncream and see how long the mad Englishman can sit (lie) out in the (near) midday sun. Suffice to say it was longer than I expected, but not longer than around half an hour!

Pool dip required every 20-30 mins for sure!

5:30pm arrived unexpectedly quickly. So I bailed, not long after Lurchio surfaced & drank my last poolside beer, I found out later.

So here’s the tiny little compromise that’s needed at the mo’ – downstairs spare room (no water pressure upstairs), shower cubicle, wet oneself (not like that, unless you want to), wet body scrub, turn off water, scrub oneself, cross fingers and hope for at least a dribble of water from the shower head to rinse down! Close all doors & curtains and air-dry by lying naked, directly under an aircon unit until dry and cool.

Moving swiftly along so one doesn’t dwell on that mental image, we congregated at around 7pm & wandered down to Sandinos. Well, when it’s this hot, you may as well have a curry, right?!

We went there last year and the Indian & Thai food is superb, and the people running the business are so lovely.

(Which, btw is a trait here. Yes, I’m aware we have gone to places that have been ‘tried & tested’ by others, but to a person, I’ve found everyone I’ve met to be really nice & welcoming, and it feels genuine, not just ‘retail patter’).

We all ordered from the set menu, with me having the (world renowned) onion bhajis, followed by a chicken dupiaza, whilst Jane & Charlie went for butter chicken and a chicken Balti respectively.

Full as a bull, we ‘Hesap Lütfen’d’ & paid the bill in Sterling, leaving a decent enough tip, I hope. Such lovely people.

A hot and sticky walk back via our man at the corner shop, where I ordered a crate (20) of Bomonti and then Ninja Lurchio silently tipped up with 6 bottles of Corona.

I asked if it could be delivered. “Yes, of course!”. “Tomorrow?” I asked? “No! Give me 5 minutes!” he answered. He gave me a cold beer for the 5 minute walk home, and after paying, we set off home.

As we were unlocking the door, our beer was delivered.

He gave me the box of 20, which was now opened slightly. This is where you have to recalibrate. Bottles missing? Swaps for some crappy stuff? Tampering? Well yes, he tampered with the previously unopened box. By swapping 8 warm beers for 8 straight from the fridge. This fella is a legend. He knows his shtick!

And so, I finish todays blog with a cold beer in hand, and wish you all the best, if you’ve managed to stay awake through this one, and have got this far! Remember, your choice! I don’t offer compensations for loss of will to live!

Night night!

Chris

x

I started today with a nip back down to the corner shop to buy fresh bread. (We bough 15l of drinking water after being dropped off by the Taxsi, last night).

The fresh bread here is superb. We used to go camping in the Dordogne, and the pain & baguettes delivered each morning were lovely, but imho, this bread is better.

Breakfast done, it was decision time. Two factors influencing our next move:

1. The water had gone off again in the early hours, but at least we were pretty well stocked up – the “if the water bottle doesn’t have a label on it, then assume it’s grey water and not drinkable” rules came back in force.

2. The most important factor – at midday, it was 43°C in the shade.

Decision made. We do nothing until mid afternoon. However, I struggled with doing nothing, so headed down to the pool where I came up with the best plan.

I got a towel, put the thin edge up to the ‘dry side’ of the pool grate. Put my phone, suncream and earbuds on the towel, then folded it back so that the majority was on the wet side of the grate. I then got in the water, wearing sunglasses & wide brimmed hat, dunked the hat thoroughly, before donning it, and then rested chin & arms on the side of the pool, with arms & shoulders fully covered by a cool, damp towel. I fell asleep it was that good!

At around 3:15, I towelled down and headed upstairs, with the plan being to try the Dolmus (bus) down into Fethiye, and then get a water Taxi to Çalis Beach. I issued a 15 minute “it’s bus, boat, beer and scran evening. Be there, or stay” to Lurchio. He appeared as we were about to leave.

Arriving at the bus stop it only took a couple of minutes to jump on a Fethiye-bound bus…

“Ne kadar tutuyor? Uç?”, I asked (“How much? Three.” I think!). He laughed, and said “Sixty”. I’d like to think he appreciated my attempt, but I’m not sure. “Tash, curl a header in!”, I said as we got off. He laughed again, this time I’m sure sarcastically, but that could be my paranoia.

We wandered from the ‘Fethiye last Stop’ (where I’m hoping we get to change and head up to Saklikent Gorge one day), and meandered through the Old Town, along ‘Umbrella Street’, buying some bracelets for Lurchios mates ‘friend that is a girl but not a girlfriend’ and then headed seaward.

Reaching the harbour, we caught the 5:30pm Water taxi across to Çalis Beach, despite Lurchios protestations. On the way, I spotted a seal and a few jumping fish, leaping out of the sea. No turtles as yet though.

It’s about a half hour trip, pontoon to pontoon. And a very nice one! At the Çalis end, you meander up an estuary to the dock, with lots of birds (and when dusk, bats) to spot.

We had a meander down the beach front, looking for somewhere to eat but Lurchios monstrous appetite seemed to have left him somewhere on the water for now.

I’m with the potential minority. Çalis…it’s not “ugh”, it’s not “amazing”, it’s not even “meh”, but it’s “ok”. I get why folk go and I’m glad we have, but that’s all. Nice beach. Seems quieter than Olu probably would be, but that’s a guess.

Strangely, he was able to force down two bottles of Corona with lime, at the bar we stopped at. Must be the lime that settled his stomach, I’m guessing.

About now, I had an Amazon Delivery alert. Special shout out to my wonderful neighbourino who put away my “special shoes”. Oh, and her hubby who changed the battery on our lounge PIR. Which, for those that know of our “lounge” must have been a feat of free-climbing! Amazed he survived!

After that, Jane & I fancied some food, so irrespective of Lurchio Pugwash’s scurvy-ridden sea legs, we called in at a neighbouring seafront “Traditional Turkish” restaurant. The food was really good & lived up to the ‘traditional’ label as well.

Plenty hummus & bread, with a Turkish version of a mint raita and I had the vegetarian snails again (sautéed mushrooms), before Jane & I ordering the chicken “sheshlich” (Shish kebabs).

And Pugwash’s appetite stretched to ordering one of the more expensive things on the menu, the lamb, eating the meat, and leaving the rest. I won’t stoop to emojis, but you can imagine which one I’d have chosen.

As well as the searing heat even at sunset, there also seemed to be a big slice of karma floating around, which landed on Lurchio, as he was informed we were now getting on a water taxi back to Fethiye Harbour.

No emojis, no gifs, but the gif would be the “Kevin & Perry” Kevin gif when his parents told him anything he didn’t want to hear – you know…the head thrown back dramatically with choreographed slump of the shoulders. That one.

We got the 8:30pm back, which docked at Fethiye at 9pm. The next decision was easy. Go home & drag misery-guts with us.

On the Dolmus (60TLR for 3 again) out of Fethiye Centre, and at 9:30pm, the bus stops were showing that it’s 36°C. And sticky hot.

We hopped off at the bottom of our road, nipped in the corner shop for some actual Lurpak (only Allah knows how much that cost us, thankfully), some soft drinks and a couple of harder, cool ones.

Back at the apartment, I headed straight to the pool, wrote most of this guff and supped a beer, all whilst dangling in the pool. Don’t ask what was dangling. Just be aware we are not overlooked.

Cooled, I headed back upstairs, wrote the paragraph after this one and then called it a night.

Probably a slow one (no change there then) tomorrow, as it’s peaking at over 45°C apparently!

Scorchio, scorchio!

Peace & love, folks

Chris

X

Firstly, let me make sure that the recent lack of water is put into context. It’s been a minor inconvenience and hasn’t stopped us doing anything.

But, at 7:15am, when I heard the toilet cistern gurgle and begin filling, I was relieved (no pun intended). The moment it was full, I went around and flushed all toilets (we have 4!). They all then refilled, so whatever happened we had 2 half flushes per loo to deploy where required!

Right! Let’s move on from water now that the floodgates have opened, and find something else to obsess about. Oh, go on then, let’s make it about the heat…

It’s been 40°C here today for most of the day (11-6pm). That’s quite hot. We’ve been hotter though. A lot, lot hotter! We’ve been lucky enough to holiday in the US, and been to some of the worlds most amazing places. One of which (one of Jane & my favourites) is Death Valley, where we experienced 54 point something degrees Celsius at the “Devils Golfcourse” on the salt flats.

If you’ve read any earlier posts you may remember we booked to go to Fez Bars BBQ Night tonight, and that’s a good walk in this heat, or a £3 Taxi ride (much more likely) down to Hisaronu, so to be honest, there was no point going anywhere today. As I wrote at the back end of yesterdays post, there’s nothing negative about that – we’ve the pool, the bar, the views, the breeze, the privacy. It’s bloody brilliant here.

So that’s what we did! Hung around the pool, wondering if we will see Lurchio today until tea time, watching the Jays & doves fly down and take a cheeky, sneaky drink from the pool.

We didn’t see Lurchio until 5 minutes after we said we’d meet to walk down to the Taxsi. But hey, ho, in the meantime, we’d had nice showers so felt “scrubbed fresh”.

After a short wait for a cab, we headed down to the top end of Hisaronu, for a meander down to Fez Bar. I won’t ever not smile at some of the shop names, with “Jimmy Shoes” being one of my favourites.

Greeted wholesomely by the bar team, as always, we were seated facing where the live music would be performed. After a brief wait whilst others settled in, the BBQ was served. Really good “all you can eat” food, at a great price (a Tenner each). The chicken kebabs were really good as were the meatballs. I went tactical and avoided bread, chips etc on the first trip, and returned for seconds when polite to do so!

Just after 9pm, Emre Evren connected up his guitar, turned on his amp & played a few good sing-along songs. I knew he had hit his target audience because Lurchio shrank in on himself to get away.

At the first break, just after 10pm, a lad who I think was called Holly sang three covers and one song he had written that had been played on BBC Radio. “Privacy”, I think he called it. He was also very good – had a great vocal.

As Jane had now finished the dregs of tonight’s cocktail, a Strawberry Daiquiri, we decided it was time to head home before Jane ended up in a ditch or got lairy.

A short taxi ride back and that’s us done for today. Water is still on, albeit with a little air in the pipes (apparent when you use the ‘bidet’ function in the toilet – trust me, you notice!), we’ve full cisterns, and reserves are replenished should we need them.

Tomorrow is forecast to be in the early/mid 40s (43/44°C), so we’ll see what takes our fancy when we get up.

Night folks,

Chris

X

Hmm. You know I mentioned the water being off on Day 1? Well…

It was off again from yesterday evening, to the point where they had small bowser trucks pumping tanked water into some restaurants, and having now joined a Facebook group specifically about infrastructure and services (water, ellecy), it seems it affected businesses with them having to close later that evening.

Given our impression so far is that it’s a quieter season (almost like for like weeks), it can’t be blamed on tourist demand, as suggested on some posts. Others seem to be suggesting that there is a general shortage of water, which seems to be backed up by posts I’ve seen from Muski, the water company, who are proposing area-based schedules, so you can at least flush toilets, fill cisterns & store grey water in containers.

Anyway, as I was finishing up & uploading yesterdays blog, I thought “time for a nightcap” & went to the fridge to grab a cold beer. Seems I’m too slow, as Lurchio had nabbed the last one, and the second to last. Given he had had 2 Bomonti with the Chinese, and two Corona in Fez Bar, I suspect he’s been somewhat “dehydrated” today.

My sleep was my seemingly now-usual pattern of fast to sleep, but then a 5am-8am struggle, after which I crash out ands wake up dazed a couple of hours later!

Our plan was to go down to Oludeniz, at midday, then to one of the Blue Lagoon private beaches for mid-afternoon, and then have more of a look around than we did last year & grab something to eat.

I was late to ‘breakfast’, so much so that even Lurchio (who I suspect fell into a beer-induced slumber early on) was up & on his balcony scoffing the fresh bread that Jane had nipped to the corner shop for.

It was noticeably hotter this morning, with even the light breeze having the occasional hot blast feel to it. As such we decided that it was likely unbearable down on the beach, so we decided to stay at the apartment until mid-afternoon and then head into Fethiye for a stroll, a cold beer, and maybe a little ferry ride to Çalis.

I’d mentioned in a previous blog that the name of the city of Fethiye has some chunky history to it, and regionally, I wrote a bit about the Greco-Turkish war in 1919-1922 on Day 13 of last years blog.

It’s an ancient city, that was part of the Persian empire from as early as 500+ BC, and the Ottoman Empire until 1922, at which point the Turkish/Greek “switcheroo” (see link above) meant mass forced migrations, at which point it was known as Makri (“the long one”).

Prior to that, back in 1914, a Captain in the Ottoman Airforce, Mr Fethi Bey along with three relatives, decided it’d be a bit of a laugh to try to be the first to fly from Istanbul to Cairo, in a Bleriot airplane. Spoiler alert – they didn’t make it and crashed & died on 27 February 1914.

It’s not much of a challenge to figure out where they crashed and so in 1934, the city was renamed Fethiye in his honour!

As we all headed down to the pool, a new episode of 93:20Pod “Thirty Questions” (Tom) dropped, so that was next on our agenda. A deliberately eclectic mix of questions put to one member of the team, some deep & philosophical, some just as important, like best and worst flavours of crisps.

This prompted us to answer along, which was actually quite good fun. Debates over “has their been a perfect film*” and “the perfect Friday evening – food, drink and film”.

(*it’s “Star Wars: Rogue One”, and “The Shawshank Redemption” in case you’re wondering).

Around 5pm we headed back to the apartment to see if we could shower & freshen up for a trip to Fethi Beys resting place. Short answer? No. Still no water. On the Facebook group it seems the natives are getting restless. To the level that a neighbouring town/village had come together and began a protest march!

Given we couldn’t shower, and still had a layer of chlorine & water resistant suncream on, we decided a dolmus or Taxsi to Fethiye sounded a bit grim. So we changed tack again, and instead headed the 0.75 miles down the upper/old road to Karizma hoping they were serving. (It was warm!).

We were in luck. At 6:45pm we squeezed in as the last available table.

The food & service were superb. Starters of garlic mushrooms (I’m on a mushroom fetish at the mo’), some mini kebabs & the “Karizma Parcels” (filo triangle pasties filled with mince, cheese & herbs). Mains were Seabass, a beef kebab, and Lurchio chose a big fillet steak because he’s not paying the “Hesap” (bill). It looked bloody gorgeous mind and it seemed to cut like warm butter. Suffice to say all plates were emptied!

Oh, Jane once again hit the cocktails. I’m starting to get worried this may be a trend which I need to control/curb post-holiday!

A slow walk up the hill back to the apartment followed, despite my lazy protestations & moaning about my pair of knackered Achilles and grade 4 osteoarthritis in my knee. “Get on with it and close your fitness ring”, Jane replied. I hadn’t even noticed it was showing!

Anyway, we got back, but I didn’t even go in the apartment, instead heading to the pool, where I opened a cold one, stripped down to my undercrackers and sat with my legs in the pool whilst writing this. The joy of which, apart for it being cooling and relaxing was that I got to meet the bats who occasionally imitated 617 Squadron by “Dambustering” their way across the pool at low level before snaffling a midge and heading back, whilst dodging nightfighters. Some of that was not factually true.

It’s call to prayer time now, so I’ll be respectful, chill out and think good thoughts, whilst avoiding nodding off and ending up fully in the pool.

Going to be honest, what we do (or don’t do) will be dictated by water availability tomorrow. We’ve stockpiled grey water for flushing, and the swimming pool may well end up more of a bath, but hopefully something gets sorted soon.

That said, it’s an ‘inconvenience’ that’s all. If we end up staying around the apartment for two weeks, with our private pool & fully stocked bar, serving Bomonti at £1.20 per 500ml bottle, that doesn’t sound like a holiday I’d turn down!

Have a cracker folks (and yes, conscious that the UK weather is somewhat different to here!).

Stay safe, peace & love,

Chris