land down under (aka. Southern Turkey)

Having come to Istanbul for the third time in my life (and counting) I knew I could not stay only in the city for the whole 9 days. So with my habibi last Sunday morning, we decided to have a look at the flights to various destinations around the country. God bless Onur Air airlines. We found a 50 EUR per person, all included return ticket to Antalya in Southern Turkey and a few minutes later we booked the trip for Monday-Wednesday. A few minutes later I asked 'so where actually is it that we are going to?' Although I travel by planes a lot I have never managed to find that cheap flight just one day before its departure. The fact that it was the low season helped a lot.

We woke up Monday morning at 5.30 AM (for me it rather felt like the middle of the night) and went to Atatürk airport. Two trams, one flight, two buses and one minibus later we were enjoying the noon sun of Olympos - a small village by the Mediterranean where you can admire the old ruins of an ancient Roman city. Beautifully located by a stream, surrounded by the mountains on the West and the sea on the East it looks like a paradise. We explored the ruins, climbed the hills picturesquely overlooking the valley, the mountains, the beaches and the sea. Simply amazing. People were extremely nice and generous. We took a tree house as our hotel room and once when we realized that it was a bad idea to sleep in the freezing cold of the night and that the light did not work we were given a nice room with TV and bathroom. No extra costs. The next day we walked to the neighboring village of Çıralı and stayed in a hotel there. The price was pretty low and it included dinner and breakfast. Our breakfast was amazing - delicious eggs, tomatoes, cucumbers, bread, cheeses. We enjoyed that in the warmth of a morning sun while sitting at table on the beach and admiring the snowy peaks of the mountains and the turquoise blue of the Mediterranean. It was like a dream. The last night, we went to the forest of Chimaira where in the middle of a meadow located on the hills of the wood we could discover a never-extinguishing fires that apparently have been burning there for centuries. As it was a cold middle of the night and we were tired after walking in complete darkness through the hills of a forest, we laid down by the fire and fell asleep for a few minutes .

The last day, in order not to miss the plane from Antalya back to Istanbul we had to hitch-hike until the highway to Antalya to later catch a minibus to the city. We were given a ride by two guys driving a tractor and since there were no more free seats they carried us on the trailer. Getting a lift on a trailer driving through a gorgeous valley surrounded by the mountains? I cannot imagine a better adventure. After a quarter on the trailer, then another car, an hour on the minibus and twenty minutes on the urban bus we were in the downtown Antalya. We could not believe how beautiful the historical centre was. The ancient Roman walls and the old Turkish wooden houses mixed together and tightly packed between the narrow streets of the downtown - different centuries or even millenniums, two pretty far from each other cultures but one perfectly filling another. The quartier was situated on the hills just by the sea and one could see the mountains in the distance. We found an open air café near a garden - the memories of a similar place in Rabat (unforgettable les Oudayas) came in a flash. We wished we could stay there forever. We took advantages of the views and the ambiance as long as we could and later we grabbed a cab that drove us off to the airport.

We were back in Istanbul. I still keep insisting on the fact the city is rather ugly. But the country is definitely fabulous. It is magical.