First impression of Turkey, EXPO 2016
Our first visit to Turkey with my wife was at the beginning of August 2016.
On the recommendation of friends, we took a tour to the hotel "Barut Hemera", located in the town of Manavgat, Side province. The hotel, (according to the guide's stories), is the basic hotel of the German chain, is not a very large, but well-groomed area on the coast, located on the first line by the sea. The staff is friendly, although not everyone speaks Russian, but understanding was achieved. The rest schedule was simple - before lunch (or so) travel around Turkey within 50-70 km around, the rest of the time at sea. The Mediterranean Sea is certainly something, it is difficult to compare with our beloved Black Sea. The water temperature is about 30 degrees, the water is clear, the most interesting thing is that there are no foreign objects and impurities in it, in any case, we have not seen it. The sand on the beach is cleaned and compacted by special rollers daily.
The rooms are in good condition, cleaned daily, towels are also changed constantly, change beach towels in a special place at least three times a day.
In principle, I liked the food, but by the end of the stay, of course, this food was already boring, I wanted my own, homemade borscht. By the way, you can’t drink good coffee here, I also couldn’t find non-alcoholic beer, and with my question about it at the hotel reception, I simply confused the staff, they couldn’t understand what I needed. The food is varied, but somehow not real, I would describe my feelings received from its daily intake in this way. If you go into details, it seems that it consists of an exorbitant amount of additives of chemical origin. This, by the way, was noticed by both my wife and my stomach, which probably digested the received vitamins in full during the first three days, leaving nothing to go outside. In addition, I was surprised that when consuming so much food, neither I nor my wife recovered even one kilogram, which speaks for itself. Cakes (how I love cakes!!!! ), with their visual appeal and a large number and variety, my taste buds refused to take them for real ones and, put several pieces on a plate, for the most part, they remained not eaten, but lonely waited, when they are removed simply with the edge broken off for testing (it's good that they are not very large in size themselves).
Drinks: in addition to the cheapest mineral water (as the plastic packaging of the bottle itself said, playing not just at hand, but simply from the presence of liquid inside), there is a huge amount of all kinds of juices, nectars, lemonades (I mean non-alcoholic, alcohol I haven’t been fond of it for many years, so excuse me), but everything is of such a vigorous color, very reminiscent of our felt-tip pens, that there is simply no need to talk about quenching your thirst. I watched with horror how the waiter at the bar counter made a cocktail of explosive drinks to the visitor who ordered it, how multi-colored liquids from different bottles of all colors of the rainbow lay in even layers in a glass and were flavored with a large amount of transparent liquid from a bottle with the inscription "Vodka" on the label. But, judging by the appearance of the beggar, it once again stirred inside him and brought him pleasure, because after a short time the same visitor was already standing at the counter and carefully looking at the newly filled glass with even more colorful liquids and, having received it in his hands, went to the table to quench his thirst, or whatever they call it.
So, excuse me, I digressed a little from the topic of the conversation - the hotel is neat, it is clear that the employees (or management) monitor its condition, the rooms are comfortable, the beds are good and orthopedic mattresses. There is a TV, but out of 50 Russian-language channels there were three: ORT, RTR and Channel Five, and a couple of days later RTR disappeared somewhere (I'm just for information, since there was no time to watch them). I got the impression that people are going to eat (the word eat is not appropriate here), get drunk and swim in the sea. The meal schedule is conducive to its uninterrupted consumption - breakfast 7-00 - 10-30, brunch 10-30 - 11-00, lunch 12-30 - 14-30, lunch snacks 12-30 - 17-00, dinner 19.00 - 21-30, night buffet 00-00 - 01-30, in addition, in the pool bars, the lobby bar, you can intercept either pancakes, donuts, cake (see above about them), fruits. Analyzing what has been said, it is clear that a simple guest does not have much time between meals to devote it (time) to something else.
Here, briefly about food and the sea. However, this did not kill us much, we tried to look around and take a deep breath of the air of the host country, and therefore, on the very first day, we signed up the next day for bodily pleasure in the local HAMAM.
By the way, there is little information regarding excursions: before leaving, a friend warned me that the Turks are inventing all sorts of fables about excursions and have recently been very jealous of receiving money from tourists, since there is a crisis in the country, like everywhere else , so listen less to stories that you can’t go anywhere and drive without a hotel guide, as you will immediately be taken to the police and you will sit there for at least a couple of days until your relatives pay 2-3 thousand dollars for your release. And what: immediately upon arrival at the Antalya airport, we were met by a representative of the "Join UP" company, a student of the Zaporozhye Institute on the profile of tourism, and, right on the bus, on the way to the hotel, she began to talk this nonsense: "We can't go anywhere ourselves, national security issues and etc. , police, militia, etc. " As it turned out, according to her, tomorrow (that is, a day after arrival), a guide from this company, who is responsible for us and our safety, will be waiting for us at the hotel. He will write us down somewhere, mark us somewhere and register with the police, but that we began to be indignant: “Why tomorrow, and not today, we want it immediately, tomorrow we can’t, because friends will come for us today, and so on. ” It ended with the fact that upon arrival at the hotel the guide was already waiting for us and the time spent on it took at most 5 minutes. Why am I saying this: even in preparation for the voyage, thanks to a friend and his parting words, I conducted a study and monitoring the prices for entertainment and educational trips in Turkey and on a separate sheet of paper in A-4 format, the name of the trip and the price of the hotel guide are already painted and among the Turks, which led to the conclusion that the hotel guides almost doubled the prices. For example: a hammam is $40 for a guide, $20 for Torok, quad bike safari - 60 and 30 respectively (I won’t give all the prices, who wants to dig on the Internet). How to find Turkish guides - yes, in front of each hotel directly on their Turkish territory, in addition, their prices also vary slightly, and there are a lot of guides there, do not be lazy, walk along the street (avenue). In general, the hamam didn’t impress me - I wallowed in some kind of mud (like silt mud), in which their sultan was also lying (according to the hamam man), then an ordinary sauna - 15 minutes, then a salt room - 15 minutes, then a steam room - 5 minutes, then directly washing in the hammam - 10-15 minutes, then a light massage and, in principle, everything. As I understand it, all visitors to the hamam find out from the masseurs there that there are problems with their spine and only they (the masseurs of this hamam) can solve your problem for $ 50 per hour of the session, to which we tactfully said that we would think about it and went home.
The next day we went diving for $45 per person: we were picked up from the hotel, brought to the boat (people like us were already waiting there) and in the amount of 33 people sailed over the cape, where within 2-3 hours, after short briefing, conducted their first dive. To be honest, there’s not much to see there, it’s not Egypt. A couple of some nondescript sea fishes floated lazily near the bottom and stirring algae, that's basically all. Then we had lunch on this ship. MANDATORY - do not forget when leaving your hotel, wherever you go, take a bottle of water with you, ordinary drinking water. So on diving - lunch, please, and some water for money - one jar of 0.33 forfeits, they have 2 dollars (in a store on land, about 45-55 cents). Take it or not if you want. Then we were taken to some island and everyone who wanted to did a second dive, my wife and I and more than half of the visitors no longer dived, so we swam in the sea and went home. I would like to wash off earlier, but where are you going from the boat to the sea. We decided that we should not regret it, since we had never gone through this, but next time we probably won’t go to this type of attraction. Pay attention to your well-being and, in general, to your readiness for this event, for example, I had such a shot in my ears that I can’t put it into words, and all sorts of purges there didn’t lead to anything (after arriving home, I was treated for otitis media for a week). The next day we visited some new cool shopping complex in Side, where all things are designed for Europeans and differ little from the assortment of our markets in Ukraine, everything is the same, prices are not cheaper, and in some cases even more expensive.
In principle, you can bargain everywhere, but there is a crisis and they have, at a certain price point (not much different from the original price), the seller freezes and that's it: if you want - take it, but if you don't want it, go your own way. We had to go there, because we couldn’t fit into the planned visit to Mount Tahtali for a simple reason: everywhere the Turks told us that there were no people who wanted to, and the two of us would not be taken to the mountain, as it was expensive. Gasoline for our money 36 UAH / l (Ai-95). So we didn’t get there, well, it’s okay, we’ll visit next time.
The next day we went to the EXPO 2016 exhibition, which is organized and held on the outskirts of Antalya. After breakfast, we left the hotel and by minibus (travel from 1 dollar, and then depending on the distance) got to the intercity route, where a regular bus picked us up at an air-conditioned stop and took us to the exhibition for 5 dollars. Having bought a ticket for 15 liras ( 5 dollars, rate 1 to 3) we began to inspect everything that was there. The theme of the exhibition is "Flowers, green life for future generations. " If you thought it was so easy to go and see, then I assure you, at first glance - yes, but when we went there, we were a little dumbfounded - the exhibition occupies nothing less, but 112 hectares, on which both open and and closed areas and rooms, the air temperature is about 40 degrees above zero, we moved from air conditioner to air conditioner, from pavilion to pavilion. What struck me the most was the figures of people and animals made of plants and flowers. (https://www.facebook.com/profile. php? id=100008635039457 - my facebook, you can see the photo or in my profile in classmates https://ok. ru/profile/84949657327/photos). Having run through most of the expositions, I can say that I did not waste my time in vain, few people have seen this and few will see it again. Summing up what has been said, we can say that we liked our vacation in Turkey. If you are reading my story, then you are probably also going there. Despite the ongoing events in Turkey on the coup and so on, I can assure you that everything is calm in the resort area, both day and night you can walk without protection. Good mood and travel to all. Sincerely, Yuriy.
PS. photographed and filmed a lot of videos
