Antalya, Turkiye

For the past couple of years, I’ve been seeing tourist ads for Antalya. A woman wearing sunglasses driving in a convertible along an ocean cliff-top road. The ad was reminiscent of something you’d see for Monaco or the French Riviera. So, I was very curious to visit Antalya and see it for myself.

We spent a bit less than a week in Antalya. The city is very large – larger than I was expecting. We stayed in a nice suburb about a 10 minute tram ride from the old town. We were near a very large shopping mall with a fantastic supermarket in it. The apartment was very comfortable, clean, and all the luxuries you would want. The only problem was that it was located directly across a small street from a mosque. The muezzin was very proud of his musical abilities and indeed he could sing for a very long time without taking a breath! Unfortunately, this meant that his calls to prayer lasted 10-15 minutes which meant there was no possibility of falling back to sleep after the early morning prayers at 4:45 and 6:30 am.

Antalya was a very beautiful city with the sea and snow capped mountains. We enjoyed a few coffees with exceptional views. The old town was also really nice with Roman buildings, temples, old mosques, ottoman buildings and the old harbour.

On another day, we walked from the old town to the beach (which was pebbly) but very popular. Antalya has some lovely parks and coastal walkways.

After Antalya, we drove west over the mountains to Fethiye. The temperatures went from 22 degrees in Antalya when we left to 10 degrees when we stopped for lunch in the mountains! The views on the way were beautiful: