Endless Turkish journey. Bodrum

19 November 2021 • Travel time: with 21 May 2021 on 29 May 2021

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Part 1. An endless Turkish journey. Bodrum

Part 2. An endless Turkish journey. Marmaris

Part 3. An endless Turkish journey. Akyaka, Dalyan and Pamukkale

Part 4. An endless Turkish journey. Kusadasi

Part 5. An endless Turkish journey. Cappadocia

Part 6. An endless Turkish journey. Cesme, Alacati and return to Kusadasi

Let's count after returning home! Me, Dasha and Misha are here, my mother-in-law has been in the village for a long time, I came out of self-isolation and I feel good. Legs, hands are all in place. We are whole and healthy. Now we can say for sure that the trip was successfully completed. We made our longest journey with a difficult route and its logistics. It would seem that this is Turkey, what could be difficult here? Moreover, we already flew last year for a whole month and have experience. But it turns out that Turkey is so different and unexpected. This time we spent 46 days on the trip, visiting about 30 cities with a stop in 7 locations. We realized the unrealized ideas of the last year, relaxed in hammams, swam in cool water parks, saw many incredible beauties, conquered an incredible number of mountains and made many amazing discoveries. Now we even have one more favorite resort in this wonderful country. But a trip to the resorts of the Aegean Sea is significantly different from last year's trip to the resorts of the Mediterranean, or it's just that the stars converged on our endless adventures, throwing more and more colors of various colors, both bright and not very bright, into our endless adventures. Looking ahead, I will say that the difficulty of this trip gets a record 10 out of 10 on our scale. So, live this journey with us, now we will rediscover Turkey from all sides.

Bodrum

I called Misha, who was hanging out with his grandmother and rejoiced him that we would soon be flying to Turkey, as we had taken return tickets from Izmir in 2 months. And when there, we don’t know yet, we will catch a suitable tour. During these couple of weeks, we managed to drive to Bulgaria, return, quickly pack up and go back to the airport. Our friends in Bulgaria wondered why we were returning to Ukraine at all, you can just cross the border. But even though you need at least some break between trips, returning home and flying again with a package tour will be much cheaper than a savage crossing the border and settling down. In Kyiv, mother-in-law Nina Mikhailovna and Mishka joined our staff. Moreover, we managed to fly out clearly at the time when the PCR was canceled for the flight to Turkey. When I looked out the window, I even felt a little sad that we were flying away for so long, although this is not typical for me. On May 21 our journey began! I couldn't believe we'd be here for so many days.

The Aegean region is quite windy, so each landing is accompanied by dumb turbulence and a little motion sickness. Which I just can't get used to. After leaving the airport, a long queue was waiting for us at the tour operator's stand. The Turkish tour operator decided to demonstrate the wonders of technology and instead of marking arriving tourists with a pen on his form, he decided to print out a color company voucher with a photo of the bus and the necessary information, instead of the black and white ones that everyone had with them. But there were two problems, there was only one slow-moving color printer for the whole plane, and since they forgot to photoshop the bus number, after printing the voucher had to be filled in with a pen. Then we had to throw this voucher away, since the hotel and the transfer did not work according to vouchers, but according to their own lists. I don’t know how many years we stood in the covid queue, but we were absolutely calm because we still have 45 days ahead. Only the mother-in-law flies away in a week, but she will have 4 seats on the return plane at once. I tried to persuade her to continue the route with us in order to see Turkey from all angles, but the chickens, the dog, the farm, etc. The road to Bodrum was extraordinarily beautiful, we have not seen such rich colors of the sea for a long time. So the first moments of acquaintance with the Aegean Sea went off with a bang. We arrived at our first hotel, checked in lightly, had lunch, and I set up a working corner for myself. Now everything is ready for working days.

Next, we were waiting for a closer acquaintance with the sea. The sea turned out to be so cold that I worried that the yachts on the horizon would not be hostages of permafrost. This is strange, I have always been sure that it is already relatively warm in Turkey since May. But judging by the comments in my feed, I realized that there is a big temperature difference between the Aegean and the Mediterranean Sea. If only this sea warmed up for the remaining 45 days. From the very first day, it became clear that, unlike last year's trip, when we wrapped ourselves in a duvet in the sea, this trip would not be classified as a sea trip. But, on the other hand, there are a lot of mountains, so there is time to while away while the sea warms up. In the meantime, let's go for a walk and explore our new city. By the way, where do we live?

Gumbet

There is a beautiful and long promenade, very suitable for romantic evening walks. But the sea itself is quite shallow and is located in the bay, that is, it is not endless. If you come during a warm period, then I'm sure you can find more pleasant beaches here, but in our case it was just nice to walk, soaking up the evening, albeit cold, atmosphere. To be honest, I didn’t even believe that it would ever be warm here. The next day, in the morning, we gathered a full delegation and began our route to Bodrum. It takes about 45 minutes to walk to the city.

The unusual appearance of the Greek part of Turkey pleasantly surprised everyone. I have not been to Greece yet, but this is how I imagined these streets and cities. Or maybe some Sardinia or Santorini always seemed to me like that, but these are just guesses, since we have not been to the cities mentioned either. There was no feeling that we are now in Turkey at all. These are completely different types.

The mother-in-law is not yet lucky to get to Europe, but at least in this way she gets acquainted with European culture. By the way, we recommend the walking route from Gumbet to Bodrum. Here, along the way, you can just see the main attractions of these places. I would love to talk about the ruins that we visited, but there will be so many ruins and ruins along the entire route that a separate book could be written about them. Misha, on the other hand, gave out the golden phrase “Why did they build so badly before that now they are solid ruins. ” But it's good that these are free. Although among the losses was ice cream, which, during the descent from the wall, Misha flew off the wand like a spell from Harry Potter. With ice cream here, we had one of the main rules.

Throughout our long journey, each member of the expedition (except Dasha) is obliged to eat ice cream once a day, and Dasha began her watermelon challenge “not a day without a watermelon”. At first, it was easy to do it on all inclusive, and then whole adventures began in the format “find a watermelon before curfew”.

Bodrum Again

Morning Bodrum met us with fragrant Turkish coffee. Nina Mikhailovna tried this coffee for the first time. And by the smell during cooking, I suggested that, probably, the grains were overcooked, but I smelled the notes of what brought me back from distant Sardinia to my native Turkey. It was the smell of the real Turk Cafesi. My mother-in-law shared my love for this type of coffee from the first sip.

Despite the fact that the morning flowed into the day, there were no more people on the streets. In all inclusive, there is one minus that you are tied to food on a schedule. So activities need to be planned at certain time intervals. They did not reach the very heart of the city on the first sortie, but they were satisfied with the beauty of its outskirts. In our current hotel, I was pleased with the beautiful pools and the bartender, who worked by vocation. We did not even imagine what masterpieces in hotels can get up from cocktails and, of course, with juggling and catching ice in the air. After a long rest with slides and a pool, we went on the second expedition, to the very heart of the city. The city was quiet enough, suspiciously quiet. I wanted to buy Turkish coffee for myself, but restaurants and cafes simply refused me. That is, workers sit, drink coffee and say that there is no coffee. Okay, let's go to something else. History repeats and repeats. From the almost complete absence of people on the streets, we realized that there might be a lockdown, but why then do workers sit in cafes and restaurants? As we found out, they can only serve guests of hotels that are located at these cafes. Bodrum without people looked not that ominous, we were the heroes of the films “I am Legend” or “Resident Evil”. And only cats roam and relax along the empty streets. No matter how much we tried to enjoy the beauty of the city, but without people and closed shutters, the feeling of tension does not leave. So we will admire the cats until we find out the rules of the lockdown. In the meantime, we know only one rule - there is no official lockdown for tourists.

Let's get back to the cats, who are looking at me suspiciously in a whole gang. As far as I remember, I only had time to say: “Wow, how they look” before I did not notice the post in the asphalt. At first I stumbled and even leveled off, but then my other foot caught on him. Since I had a camera in my hand, I instinctively put my elbow instead of my hand during the fall. Around this moment, our quiet part of the journey ends and the adventure begins. My hand hurt a lot, I sat on the pavement and waited until the conditional stars of their eyes stopped pouring. The arm looks intact, but I already know well how elbow injuries end, even minor ones. The hand looked pretty good at first. We even successfully walked around the city, returned to the hotel, and after dinner I went for an evening walk along the embankment. But the elbow began to increase significantly in size. We urgently needed an ointment from a series of fastum gels, but from the entire first-aid kit, we forgot it at home. So, without panic, you just need to find a working pharmacy, late in the evening, during the lockdown, when everything is closed. Fortunately, a medical center turned out to be open. We went to ask if they had any ointment. They naturally began to push how urgently we need to be serviced by them, and that they work with insurance. I told every fireman that there was no money, they also said that I would not have to pay if I was insured. But here is the nuance, the package tour insurance includes default insurance with a deductible. I also have a banking non-franchise, but they don’t know this by default. And what is interesting is the calculation when they say that they will not have to pay anything, do they really think that someone will eventually pay them the cost of the franchise.

In general, I am lucky that a year ago in Turkey, an insured event happened when most pharmacies were closed, which is now. The doctor immediately made a diagnosis, which I feared - “bursitis”. Such a thing last time was quite problematic. The main thing is to start applying the ointment in time. While the doctors were dealing with my hand, the realization came to me that the bank insurance had ended just a couple of days ago, and the photo of the new policy had not yet come to my mail, and of course the bank was closed on Saturday evening. It is important that in such a situation you have a liaison at home. Dasha dialed my mother, who began an investigation on the topic “What is the new number of my policy”. Mom called the insurance company, described the situation and asked to find my policy. The insurance agent was surprised to find that for some reason the policy was not in the database. But he advised me to contact the parent international insurance company, through which this case will pass. They found my policy number there. We agreed with the medical center that I would send them a copy of the old policy and give them the number of the new one. This should be enough for them. The girl called my insurance company, gave the policy number, they said that she was already aware of the situation from her mother and would pay for everything so that I would not bathe. They treated and fixed my hand, and also gave me a long-awaited ointment and pills. In order to convey the gravity of this situation, it is worth clarifying that in the clinic they spoke almost pure Turkish, which greatly complicated all our communications. At that moment, I thought that everything was so complicated, apparently the stars didn’t stand up like that, or some kind of retrograde Mars in the wrong house of the Moon, or whatever else happens there. But as it turned out on Monday, I was even very lucky. Firstly, my elbow felt much better, and secondly, when I contacted the bank, I found out that this year the auto-renewal of the policy did not work due to a number of nuances and I simply do not have insurance. When we started to check what the policy number was given to me, it turned out that it was one of the expired policies. So I am very, very grateful to my insurance that they are so loyal. And of course, the mother of the heroine, who got a number through the international central insurance company, and Dasha, who coordinated everything so cleverly. In such a situation, it is good to have a reliable team. Now back to the second day off. We have already understood that there are lockdowns on weekends and there is nothing to do in cities at this time. So you need to put the mountains on the weekend.

Dagbelen

Fortunately for us, one of the mountain towns was in the zone of adequate prices for a taxi, so we reached the very heart of the mountains with a breeze. The mountainous cities of Turkey are my special love, I can’t even explain why they attract me so much, but the freshness of the mountain air, the mountain singing of mosques give rise to pleasant emotions. An interesting fact is that already in the middle of the trip we will stop noticing the singing of mosques and will not even wake up when they sing at night, the brain undergoes some kind of adaptation to them. We even had an insight when I asked Dasha if we had not heard of mosques for a long time. In Dagbelen, stocks of ice cream and water were replenished.

Now you can start tracking. There are a lot of routes here, of various lengths and complexity. Mother-in-law was so cheerful on a difficult route that Dasha and I now hope to be the same mountain-peppy at her age. The trails diverged then converged and it was possible to switch from shorter routes to longer ones. If time and energy permits.

Turkey and mountains, what else is needed for happiness? After many hours of descent, a reward awaited us - a Turkish bakery, where we happily feasted on our route, since we no longer got to the hotel for lunch. It is also convenient that all mountain routes end in the vicinity of Bodrum, it will be quite inexpensive to get to the hotel by taxi. That's just where to get this taxi in such a place, a good question. I had to walk part of the route around the city on foot in search of civilization.

During the day there was relaxation in the pools and joy on the hills. The weekend is over, and now my weekdays begin.

Udalenka in Turkey

Bitez

One of the pleasant discoveries was the neighboring town of Bitez. If the Gumbet embankment was still getting ready for the season, then the mood of a Turkish holiday was already in the air. Restaurants and lounge areas on the beach, relaxing music is playing, people are walking!

The city is quite small. At the first acquaintance, we examined all its streets and nooks and crannies. There is even a gorgeous cliff over the sea for contemplation into the sea distance. It would be nice to settle here, but it turns out far from Bodrum, it will not be very good for hiking routes. A big advantage of traveling in May is the flourishing cities.

Flowers were everywhere here, the bushes seemed to compete among themselves who would bloom more beautifully. Nina Mikhailovna continued to valiantly carry out routes with us through all the surrounding cities and enjoy the journey, albeit with a cold sea. And there were many cities and places!

Bodrum Mills

Every trip has a calling card, which is remembered at the mention of the trip. In my memory, the mills located on one of the neighboring mountains are firmly entrenched. All the beauty of this place - from the mountain you can see a rhinestone on two bays. This place has its beauty both on a clear day and at sunset. This is the case when a photograph cannot convey the beauty of the place to you, since in addition to the picture, there is an atmosphere upstairs.

Local families gather to spend another day, other guys here shoot a picturesque clip. We realized that our soul requires the continuation of the banquet and we decided to go down to the peninsula at the foot of the mountain. Fortunately, here we really appreciated the physical complexity of the route, and my mother-in-law and Misha went to the hotel for dinner, and we began our descent.

A herd of sheep was waiting for us on the peninsula! In fact, they didn’t really expect us, but what harmony and beauty is there. It's like a fragment from the "Horton Plateau" from Sri Lanka. How long ago it was. For me, travel was divided into two worlds, before covid and during the epidemic. Previously, these were planned trips for the year on well-chosen dates in order to capture as many weekends or holidays as possible.

Now, relatively spontaneous (less than a month) trips, in which tickets are taken as soon as possible before departure at any time of the week, just to be cheaper.

The new format, of course, comes out more expensive, but less risky, since in our time, from a planned trip to a disrupted one, one unsuccessful cough in your direction is enough.

Bodrum Center

Now we are experienced and we know that during the lockdown you should not get acquainted with the cities, this time our acquaintance with Bodrum itself took place on a weekday. The city came to life, now nothing indicated an epidemic, everyone is walking, the artist opens the doors of his gallery, shops are open, coffee is poured! Now we like it here much more, we can safely do our favorite thing - wander aimlessly through the old streets and enjoy the beauty.

Our aimless wandering had already taken us far from the center, and we all could not work up. But the boundaries of the dinner did not allow to roam to the fullest. Unfortunately, there are not many hours between the end of the working day and the end of dinner. Also, weekday trips, as luck would have it, fly faster than vacation trips.

Somewhere in the mountains again

This time we went to the ruins of the ancient city of Pedasa. The convenience of the idea was that the taxi brings us back to the very top. Straight to the ruins. This is the second time we have come across a unique phenomenon in the vicinity of Bodrum, when you can take a taxi directly to the top of the mountain. True, in this case, the pleasure of getting into a hard-to-reach place is a little lost. But in terms of tourism, everything is under control here. Even when we passed the checkpoint to the national park, the worker told the driver in Turkish which places in the future ruins we should pay attention to. It was tall and beautiful. And it was a very pleasant and unforgettable descent from the mountain down to the city itself, right to the hotel. Although, when we were at the top of the mountain, we could not even believe that we could take it and go down like that. But a simple descent along the path was not enough for us, we decided to bypass all the paths leading down, both shorter and longer.

Believe me, panoramas are worth it. It is a pity that this time it is no longer possible to enjoy the panoramas of our full team. The mother-in-law remained in the room with disturbing signs of either severe poisoning or one of the most popular diseases of our time. For Nina Mikhailovna, unfortunately, the last two days of the trip completely fell out, since she didn’t even have the strength to leave the room, in general, everything was as per protocol, complete isolation. Fortunately, our number was two-room and we moved Misha to our place.

In addition to Nina Mikhailovna, one of our favorite characters has ceased to flicker on the territory of the hotel. It was a man with an indefinite name, as he seemed to be one, but, apparently, he was my namesake. We paid attention to him on the plane. He was either a passenger or a flight attendant, serving drinks along with a flight attendant. He participated in all activities of the hotel 24 hours a day. He managed to be everywhere at once. And even when I went to the reception in the middle of the night, as I had to clarify something, he offered to solve any issue in pure English. That is, now he is also an employee of the hotel. For us, its source of energy remained the main mystery, moreover, it was clearly not intoxication, since it could not stay 24/7. I think that he would have easily passed our route in Turkey without minibuses and taxis. And most importantly, you still need to be able to relax like that!

Well, to determine the pricing policy on the hotel website, you will have to learn a little Turkish. If you want “Her shey dakhil” and a room with a separate place for “chudzhuk”, learn Turkish) We were helped by a Russian-speaking guide who miraculously got through to the hotel and said that they would be happy to wait for us there at the price that we see on site. You can get from Bodrum to Marmaris either with a change through Mugla, or urgently by taxi. This is when the Internet completely fails in the hotel, and you urgently go to the next hotel to continue working. Nina Mikhailovna flew home. According to our first location, my general review is this. Bodrum is certainly an interesting place in Turkey, which makes sense to include in a long itinerary, but if you are flying in for a standard week, then I would give priority to more picturesque resorts.

The first week of the trip was also marked by the fact that when we were evicted from the hotel, some of the things from the suitcase were stolen from us. On the one hand, of course, it will be easier for us to travel now, but on the other hand, who needs old shorts with a belt, a cosmetic bag with cotton buds and a manicure set?? ? Do they really have such a shortage of belts? Of the valuable, these are Dasha's new crocs and 200 UAH, which were in the pocket of the shorts. There, probably, there was a calculation that we would think that they had stolen from us at the airport, but we just moved to a nearby hotel, and things evaporated. We contacted the hotel, but no one knows anything there. Apparently, the theft occurred when the worker carried our suitcase from the room to the reception. A funny fact is that a week later, on one of the excursions, we will meet a tourist who will have our hotel's bracelet on her arm. Having exchanged just a couple of phrases, we learned that we were not the only ones from whom the hotel was stealing things. Fortunately, according to our personal travel statistics, this happens quite rarely - 2 times in 11 years.

Continuation in Marmaris

Translated automatically from Russian. View original