Friends Heather and Volkan had invited us to join them for lunch in the seaside resort town of Marmaris, Turkey. I say "town", but really it's a small city and quite a bustling place.
It's located only a 20 minute drive from our cottage. One of the reasons we chose this location is that there are a lot of places to go and things to see within a 100 km (62 mile) radius, so we have lots of day trips to do over the next couple of weeks.
Wednesday was a travel day but in order to travel, we first had to pick up our rental car.
We have rented cars in various countries and the procedure isn't always as standard as what you would expect. When we were in Romania, we rented a car and the guy came to meet us in a grocery store parking lot where I gave him some cash and he gave me the keys!
Yes, we could have paid the big bucks and done a standard tourist rental with Avis or one of the other brand names. But that wouldn't be like us.
Another busy day for us yesterday. We finally made the effort to get a reasonably early start, and we left the apartment just before 9:00am. It was only a five minute walk to the dolmuş stop. Dolmuş is the turkish name for a local minibus. The ones we were in seat perhaps 16 people. Because of Covid, they do not take cash payments right now, nor do they take standing passengers. Apparently in normal times they can get quite crowded.
There is a regular route between Fethiye and Ölüdeniz so we didn't have to wait any longer than five minutes. For payment, most people buy a prepaid "tap" card and then top it up with credit as necessary. But I had read that you can also tap your credit card, and sure enough it accepted my Visa card and I instantly got an email notification from my bank that my my account was charged. What a great system!
You might notice at the bottom of each daily post we are now listing the total distance we have walked while in Turkey. I'm not quite sure why, but we are keeping track of it. We always think that the best way to see an area is to walk it... and we are doing a lot of walking so it will be interesting to see how many kms (miles) we actually do!
On Tuesday, we decided to walk down to the other side of the Fethiye harbor area. Ruth had read of an old Roman amphitheater that we wanted to see.
We had a nice relaxing morning on Sunday, then after lunch we decided to walk along the waterfront up to Çalış Beach. This beach is another area that is popular with British tourists. So much so that you see signs that advertise "Full British Breakfast" with all the writing in English.
We knew it was going to be a fairly long walk because the beginning of Çalış Beach is 8 kms (5 miles) one way from our apartment. But other than the one steep stretch leading back up to our apartment, it was mostly flat.
Blog readers Judi and Charles had sent us a message asking if we wanted to join them for a full day boat trip around the coastline of this area. We don't normally do these types of touristy things, but the price was right and it seemed like a relaxing way to spend the day and see some of the local scenery.
We contacted the Baba Tekin's Boat Tour Company through their facebook page and they were quick to respond. It turned out that the cruise for Saturday October 17th was their last one for the season, and it was a one way trip around the shoreline between Ölüdeniz and Fethiye, with lunch included. Special price for this trip was 100 lira ($16.65 CAD, $12.60 USD) per person. Normal price during the season was 150 lira per person.
Friday morning, we left the apartment at about 10:30am. We were actually aiming for earlier than that, but it just never happened. We wanted to hike up the dirt path I found that leads into the hills behind our apartment building, and of course the morning is the coolest time to do it.
And it was definitely starting to warm up by the time we got going. They were calling for a high of 27C (81F).
Thursday was a day of rest, for the most part. We spent the morning planning, although we still didn't come up with a firm choice as to where we are going next. Not that we're in a huge rush to figure it out because we are here until next Wednesday.
I know, that's only five days away, but there are a LOT of empty accommodation options available. Normally the British would be starting to come to this area for a holiday. But Turkey is not on the quarantine exemption list for Britain, so although they are welcome to come here, they have to quarantine for 14 days when they return home. So not nearly as many will be coming.
We are just getting ourselves into a blog posting routine here in Turkey. I know that it feels to most of you like you missed a daily blog post along the way, but our activities take place 7 hours ahead of eastern time and this blog post actually gets us caught up. You haven't missed a thing!
We will try to post during our morning here which means when those of you in North America wake up each morning, there will be a blog post waiting for you and you will be able to read Travel with Kevin and Ruth while drinking your morning coffee.
As I write this, we have been in Turkey (country #39 for us!) for a total of about 7 hours.
And our first impressions are that we are really going to like Turkey!
Let's back up a little bit to our overnight stay at London's Gatwick airport. We had booked a cheaper and better than expected room at the Premier Inn Hotel located right across the street from the airport terminal.
Our flight from Ottawa to Toronto was uneventful. It was just a small two propeller turbo prop plane, and it was probably 80% full. It was a one hour flight.
Then we had a five hour wait for our Toronto to London flight. We arrived Toronto at 4:00pm, and our London flight was scheduled to depart at 9:00pm.
We were in Gravenhurst, Ontario (about 2 hours north of Toronto) yesterday visiting with our son and his girlfriend. Our daughter and the grandkids showed up as well! It was a great family send off for us!
However...
Just before lunch I got an email from our Airbnb host in Berlin. She said that Berlin has been declared a Covid hotspot and that we would have to quarantine for 5 days after we arrive in Berlin. Not only that, but we might have difficulty moving on to another spot in Germany depending on the rules of the German state that we would happen to be moving to.
We had a bunch of last minute stuff to do at Ruth's dad's house. You would think that after having been there for more than two months we would have been totally organized to leave, but we still found ourselves rushing around at the last minute.
We didn't leave the house until around 12:45pm, and then we still had to drop one last load of stuff off at the charity shop, and go to the bank and do some other running around.
Well, we are done at the house... for now. There is still a lot to be done, or at least a lot that could be done. But eventually it will be up to the people who buy the place. In the meantime, Ruth's brother Colin will take over where we left off and it will be up to him to get some more things done over the winter.
The plan is that we will return here for the last two weeks of May next year. We have the auction arranged for Saturday ,May 29th.
Ruth's parents came to Canada from England back in the late 1950's so she still has relatives there and we like to visit every few years. But the last time we were in England was in July of 2012!
So we really were due for a visit, which is why we originally booked our upcoming flight to London. The price was cheap, and when we booked it back in June we figured that maybe they would have lifted the quarantine for arrivals from Canada by now. Of course that hasn't happened which is why we are now carrying on to Berlin.
