SO  AT HOME IN TURKEY

 Part of the joy of travel is the feeling of strangeness, the other worldness of another language, culture, food,  religion, and the ability to be able to look on your life in the real world and compare.  We have now been to Turkey so many times that it has become to feel like home.  True we are mostly with English speaking Turks (they are excellent linguists) and their language still eludes me except for menu Turkish and the absolute essentials, but I love their sense of humour, their optimism, their  ethic of hard work, and the feeling that everything is possible – although their optimism sometimes exceeds reality in this case….

We spent almost four weeks in Kalkan during September/October and had a wonderful time.  The sea was a little choppy for the time of year, but we still swam most days.  We found new places to go in the hills, unidentified birds,  and  tried to keep away from the more expensive restaurants for more excellently cooked local food, and re-discovered Patara.

George has just acquired a much better camera, and it has been a revelation.  Taking a photo of the bee hives above Islamlar, we were thrilled to discover when we uploaded it, that we could see the bees emerging in great detail. 

We did our usual trip to Kas and there I found a doorway painted in such a beautiful way with a sort of distressed whitewash that it has made us determined to come back in the winter and paint  all the pine in our apartment ourselves, or get painted.  I showed the photo to our friend Halit who said ‘Oh yes, our carpenter can paint like that for you, it’s a water based paint we can get over here’.  That was also music to my ears, as I expected I would have to pay for Annie Sloan paint or similar and ship it to Turkey.  I used to do distressed painting for a living, and I love the look of white distressed wood for sea facing rooms. 

We heard helicoptors one afternoon and watched three in unison fly low over the sea in front of us, scoop up a huge sling of water and fly off to the hills.  Apparently there was fire  on the scrub, but couldn't see it from where we were.  It was out within half an hour, but we were lucky to get this photo.

 

We had friends out there who had recently moved into their exciting five bedroomed villa which was miraculously built in just five months, and is the last word in luxury.  We, and their glamorous young, had a marvellous day out in a boat, and visited the beach known for its mud containing mineral properties which have been used for hundreds of year.  Everyone seemed to enjoy it!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lunch on the boat is always awesome.  And endless.  And there's cake for tea......

Below are a few views around Kalkan