Turkey

Thanksgiving is over and so is the weather. There were were sailing serenely along the Mediterranean coast of Turkey under a perfectly blue sky when... Wham! We ran into a storm of biblical proportions and wished we had hired an Ark instead of a Renault. Garbage cans,trees and hydro poles were flung into our path, the turquoise sea turned to slate and threw itself viciously at the cliffs, roads turned into rivers and ancient villages were dislodged from their mountainside perches. We plodded on, but had to skip a couple of historic sites in order to keep dry and maintain our schedule. However, we've been to so many fascinating places on this trip that we could open a Turkish travel agency. Afrodisias is a ruined Roman city that rivals Ephesus, but isn't so well known because of its remoteness. Its claim to fame is this incredible stadium...

It is vast and seated more than 30,000 people a couple of millennium ago. Afrodisias is also known for its magnificent marble sculptures and this beautiful temple of Aphrodite...

And, of course, it had a theatre. Here is James trying a little Shakespeare on a stage that was already 1,500 years old when the Bard was born...

But the most splendid theatre in the Roman Empire of Asia Minor is in Aspendos. Aspendos was a great city 500 years BC, but the Romans built this incredible twenty-thousand seater at the end of the first century AD.

The theatre is so perfectly preserved that concerts and performances are still staged here, and it is so acoustically perfect that it is possible to hear a stage whisper in the back row of the upper gallery - we know,we tried it.

Fortunately the storms had passed by the time we reached the airport in Izmir and flew off on the next leg of our tour - this time to see one of the most unforgettable and unmissable sights in the world. Here's just a taster...

While our Canadian friends are enjoying their Thanksgiving turkey we're enjoying our Turkish Turkey - and there is a great deal here to enjoy. It's October, but the blue skies, warm seas and cold beers are still enticing the bacon butty and bratwurst brigades from the north, and the all-inclusives are still pumping out margaritas and karaoke late into the night. However, this year's party is almost over and most hotels are getting ready to pull down the shutters. In Kas, (pronounced Cash) we were the only guests in this splendid 25 room hotel...

We had a 50 seat restaurant, the swimming pool and private beach all to ourselves...

Kas was at one time a quaint fishing harbour and it has managed to retain some of its charm despite a thick Germanic veneer, while Antalya, Side, Fethiye and Marmaris have all shrugged off their Turkish mantels and gone whole hog for the western tourists. Storekeepers and restaurateurs offer their specials in English and German and most prices are quoted in euros or sterling rather than Turkish Lira. However, the English menus aren't always easy to follow and we would like your help with a couple that stumped us...

Dalyan is another place that has buckled under the weight of tourists. Its main attractions are natural mud-baths, the breeding beaches of the leather-back turtles and these elaborate cliff tombs carved several thousand years BC by the Lycians...

Twenty-five years ago, we were led to believe by friend Joyce, Dalyan was a quiet backwater with a couple of B&Bs and a rowboat for visiting the tombs. Now it is a high-octane riverside resort with nearly three hundred tour boats racing noisily past the ritzy restaurants and waterfront hotels as they ferry tourists between attractions. Early-birds as usual, we took to the river before breakfast and had the place to ourselves. James even got to drive the boat...

The rugged Mediterranean shore of Turkey is truly spectacular, with glassy turquoise seas fringed by pine clad mountains and precariously perched olive and pomegranate groves...

In the past 6 days we've driven about 1,500 kms of coastline and stayed in a variety of hotels - all excellent - but our present abode takes the baklava. It is an elegant, if slightly garish, Ottoman residence which is as Turkish as they come - and we love it...

Everywhere we go in the world we encounter friendly people, but the ones we usually meet are those who have a vested interest in pleasing us. The hoteliers, waiters, taxi drivers and tacky souvenir touts all depend on us tourists for their livelihood so it pays them to smile. But readers of James' novels may remember that when his ace detective, David Bliss, visited Turkey in The Fish Kisser he was constantly warned that there was nothing more dangerous than a smiling Turk. So we decided to put this stereotype to the test with the help of a couple of smiling Turks.This is Zafer and Yildiz - authentically Turkish and genuinely smiling.

But were they dangerous? Not in the least - other than Yildiz's fabulous meals that seriously threatened our already expanded waistlines...

Thanks to their daughter, Ebru, who is a close friend and colleague of James' eldest daughter, we were given a royal welcome in their home near Alanya and can now say authoritatively that Turks are as warm and innocuous as their smiles suggest. Also warm and very welcoming is the eastern Mediterranean. While daytime highs have consistently topped out at a pleasant 30c under a cloudless sky for the past two weeks, the nights have been relatively chilly. But the translucent turquoise sea remains a balmy 28 degrees day and night and is like a tepid bath when we take our early morning swim each morning - once we have fought our way through the throngs on the beach here in Cirali...

But the sea is not the only warm thing here. In Cirali, near the ruined city of Olympos, we climbed for seemingly hours up a rugged track in the moonlight high into the foothills of Mt. Olympos where the ancients believed that the gods made fire from the rocks. "Stuff and nonsense," we said, until we arrived, exhausted, and found roaring flames, two or three feet high, lighting up the rock face around us.

These are the famous 'Chimaera' or chimneys of gasses that spontaneously combust and cannot be extinquished. They have burned for several thousand years and the Romans and others built temples around them in order that they could worship Vulcan, the god of fire. Today, people bring sausages, kebabs and marshmallows to barbecue over the flames - a different kind of worship altogether...

We are now making our way westward along the rugged turquoise coast of Turkey that was once the home of the Lycians - a civilization that pre-dated the Persians and the Byzantians in the 12th century BC. We will be visiting the tombs and other monuments created by these people as well as marveling at the fantastic vistas along the way...

In the three years we have been writing this blog we have visited fourteen countries and written two hundred stories about the places we've seen and the people we've met. What began as a travel diary and a way of keeping in touch with friends and family has grown to the point where more than four thousand people have read some of our most popular entries. There have been more than 150,000 visitors to our blog in total. So, although we are currently basking in a sub-tropical paradise near the ancient city of Olympos in southern Turkey, through the magic of the blogosphere we thought we would take you on a whirlwind tour around the world to revisit some of our most treasured memories.

Let's start in London - our favourite city in all the world. Here's the London Eye that gave us spectacular views of the entire metropolis...

France is a very special place for us - not least because of the two grandchildren who live there. But we will always remember our wonderful cruise on the Canal du Midi aboard the good ship Carmen with Captain David...

In Spain we visited the great citadel of Alhambra which overlooks the ancient city of Granada....

The Grand Bazaar in Istanbul is a bustling place full of exotic sights and sounds, and although we rarely buy anything we love the razzmattaz of markets...

Luxor, on Egypt's Nile, is surely one of the world's greatest treasures, and sailing in a felucca at sunset was magical...

Speaking of magic - our time by the river at Champakulam in India was just a dream...

And then there was Thailand and the Royal Palace in Bangkok...

Luang Prabang in Laos...

Halong Bay in Vietnam...

And the rice paddies of our friend Tony in Bali, Indonesia...

However, many of our favourite places have yet to appear on our blog - Venice, Lucca, Rome, Dubrovnik, Paris, New York and Hong Kong are all places to which we will happily return whenever we get a chance. But there is one place to which we often return, and we know that it is the most beautiful place on earth. It is Gabriola Island, British Columbia - our home...

This is the view from our front window.

Side, Turkey, is very appropriately pronounced sea-day as it an eastern Mediterranean seaside resort that appeals to the egg and chips and "Kiss-me-quick" brigade and their German equivalents. The coastline is crammed with all-inclusive resorts and the narrow streets of the 'old' city are jammed with glitzy shops falling over themselves with flashy jewellery, swanky leather and more flavours of Turkish delight than Baskin Robbins...

This once was a quaint little harbour, but now it's awash in beer parlours and excursion boats masquerading as old Turkish gulets...

Somethings don't change; this Temple of Athena has withstood the test of time and the weighty crush of northerners...

There are still quite a few tourists topping up their tans for Christmas, but the big spenders left more than a month ago and the hotels and restaurants are scrabbling to squeeze the last drop out of this year's harvest. But it is a harvest of another kind that interests us. As regular readers will know, we love wandering the markets - meeting locals as they go about their daily lives - and Selcuk market was an absolute treat...

These cabbages were gargantuan, (though nowhere near the mammoth world record of127lb).

The stalls bowed under the weight of all manner of local produce, but it's harvest time and truck loads of pomegranates, melons, olives, bananas, figs and grapes are being hauled in before the wintry sun ripens the oranges and lemons and dries the dates. This is truly a fruitful land...

For market lovers, Selcuk had it all. Stalls laden with everything, including the kitchen sink, spread throughout the town and we could have shipped a container full of Turkish delights home. The only thing missing was carpets. In fact we've seen relatively few carpets and, despite warnings about the persistence of Turkish rug purveyors, we've had no hassle at all - not even from this guy....