Our cottage stay has been good, but not great...

We didn't do very much on Monday. We're trying to take a day off every now and then! But that doesn't mean we don't have things to talk to you about. Besides, it took forever to get yesterday's blog post online for you. Our internet connection is overall not bad, but the upload speed is a little slow. So with all of the pictures we had to show you, it was a time consuming process.

But we did some reading, and got some exercise and went out for our 5 km (3 mile) power walk. And of course there is a never ending supply of onward travel research to do on the internet.

October Expenses

Well, we knew that October was going to be an expensive month. We spent $3,182 CAD ($2,405 USD) for the month.

But, considering that we started the month in Ottawa, Canada and ended the month in Turkey, I suppose that's not bad. And, since our Ottawa to London airfare was actually paid for way back in May, it doesn't actually feel as hard on the bank account. 

Here's how it all broke down...

Day trip visit to Dalyan and the ancient city of Kaunos

Too many photos! We took over 100 photos yesterday. I've whittled them down, but there is so much interesting stuff to show you that this is going to be a long blog post.

Sunday morning we made our way over to the ancient city of Kaunos, which is located beside the modern town of Dalyan. For whatever reason, not many people visit Kaunos. It's a little difficult to get to, and most tourists who go to Dalyan seem to go for the river boat tours.

Earthquake! And a very cool cave...

Thanks for your responses and comments regarding yesterday's post. It feels good to know that most of you will find our daily blog posts without clicking through facebook. Because we post every single day when we're traveling, all you have to do is to manually check in here (either by booking marking this site, or typing www.travelwithkevinandruth.com into the address bar above, or searching "Kevin and Ruth" on Google)... and you will be brought right here without the need for facebook. If you do that every day at around the same time, you can't miss a post!

Most of you will know by now that parts of Turkey and Greece experienced a fairly bad earthquake on Friday afternoon at around 1:50pm local time.

Facebook has some big problems

I wouldn't normally talk about something like this, but other than our 5km (3 mile) power walk we didn't do much due to the weather yesterday. And I think this is important.

We've been using Facebook for more than 10 years. We keep in touch with our kids and friends through their messaging system. We join various discussion groups that we might be interested in. We operate an RV'ing in Mexico group that has over 5,000 members. We operate a Travel with Kevin and Ruth page that directs people to this blog. And lastly, we make money from an Amazon group that has over 24,000 members.

Life in Turkey... we can understand the attraction!

We've only been in the country for two and a half weeks, but we wanted to go over with you some of the interesting things we have learned during that time.

Admittedly, we did not know very much about the country prior to our arrival. And really, we didn't even know we were coming here until three days before we arrived. So we didn't have much time to educate ourselves about our destination.

Beautiful views overlooking Marmaris, and onward accommodation booked

For quite a few days, the weather forecast had been calling for a 100% chance of rain on Wednesday afternoon in Marmaris, Turkey. They kept on changing the projected start time of the rain, varying it between 3:00pm and 5:00pm. But either way, they were 100% sure it was coming.

And they were right. But it started a bit early at about 2:30pm. Fortunately we had already completed our 10 km (6.2 mile) hike in the hills behind Marmaris, and were just finishing doing a quick grocery shop when it started coming down.

Exploring some more Turkish waterfront scenery

Thanks for all of the suggestions and comments regarding yesterday's blog post. We have decided that we will not go to Cappadocia on this trip. It's too much driving and we would feel too rushed. We are confident that we will return someday with a motorhome when we will be able to explore more of what Turkey has to offer (including the northern area closer to the Black Sea), at a better time of year related to the weather, and at our own pace.

On Tuesday, we took a drive down a coastal road to a viewpoint overlooking the town of Oren. We left at about 10:30am did some exploring and made a couple of stops along the way and didn't make it back to the cottage until almost3:30pm!

We need to come up with a plan

On Monday, we took a touring day off. So we relaxed for the morning and did some research about onward travels. We have to be out of our current location on Wednesday November 4th and we don't yet know where we're going. More about that further down!

After lunch, we went out for a walk. There are still quite a few back roads around here that are worth exploring... gravel roads that we can walk to right from our location here in the village.

Daytrip visit to the ancient city of Knidos, Turkey

We tried to get an early start, and managed to get on the road by 8:40am. It was supposed to be a non stop drive of just over two hours to get to the tip of the Datça Peninsula where the ancient city of Knidos is located.

Some cities in Turkey are among the oldest in the world. They say the capital city of Ankara has been continuously inhabited for over 3,000 years. But some very vibrant cities did not last despite being inhabited for very long periods themselves. Knidos is a perfect example.

Around our village of Gökçe, Turkey. Everyone is really friendly!

The village where we are staying is called Gökçe. I would try and tell you how to pronounce it, but we would only be guessing ourselves! Gökçe is actually bigger than a village... I would say it's probably about 1,200 people. A small town.

We went out for a walk Saturday just to explore the area. We ended up on a dirt road and we had no idea where it went, so we just went and did some exploring. The dirt road led us to a really neat spot!

Nice views and more rock tombs

On Friday we drove inland, up into the mountains. I had scouted out three possible things to see along a route of about 100 kms (62 miles).

From our village, we can see the first ridge of mountains rising 3000' above the Mediterranean Sea. We had seen a major roadway leading up into that area, and I used the maps.me app and google satellite view to find things to do in the area that we might not otherwise know about.

Day trip to Marmaris, Turkey and a nice lunch out

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.

We have wheels!

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.

Ghost town of Kayaköy, and hike to the Af Kule Monastery

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!