The Start of the End of A Merry-ish Holiday

                 

Hadrian's Gate

                Antalya was the first time in my life where I fully became aware of the dangers of owning a credit card.  This was partly due to the significant cost of visiting Ephesus, and perhaps because we haven’t quite switched from the mentality of Indonesian holidays, Joe and I didn’t bring enough money to do everything we would have liked to do.  We had the money, safely ensconced in our house in  Malatya, but with no way to access it, our solution was to either be frugal or use my credit card.  The lack of free breakfast at our ‘pansiyon’ (hostel, although it sounds much fancier in Turkish) didn’t help matters either as it doubled our food budget for the day, but alas we decided to be as frugal as we could be and get by on what we had. 

Hidirlik Tower- right outisde our hotel room.

                We arrived in Antalya at dusk, found the shuttle bus that would take us into the city, told them where we were going, and were subsequently dropped off a considerable distance from our lodgings.  Due to a bad cold that had made its appearance in Marmaris, and the altitudes we travelled to arrive in Antalya, I had been rendered (temporarily) without adequate hearing.  Both my ears needed to pop and I couldn’t make them pop for the life of me, leaving me in a semi-foul mood, and Joe and GPS in charge of getting us to our hostel.  We wandered across town, down many flights of stairs and up many more flights of stairs, asking for directions a couple of times before reaching our destination a good thirty – forty five minutes later.  We deposited our things in the shoebox of a room we were given, drank tea with the owners (delicious fruity tea) and then went in search of food.  We were sidetracked by a man who asked where we were from, had an ex-girlfriend from Vancouver and then dragged us to his carpet shop, trying to persuade us to buy a carpet.  We informed him we had no money (not that this stopped him) but eventually we took his business card with (false) promises to come back, and went for dinner.  We found a beautiful restaurant where we could hear the waves crashing against the glass, however due to my stuffy nose and clogged ears, I couldn’t tell you if the food was any good or not.  We called it a night shortly thereafter.

Morning views

                We awoke the next day to gale force winds and went in search of breakfast.  We ended up wandering for an hour (inadvertently stumbling across Hadrian’s Gate in the process) before ending up at the restaurant next to our hotel, with oily food, good views and superb coffee.  We spent the hours after breakfast traversing the old city and markets, wandering through the old Bazaar, watching the waves crash through the marina, pirate boats rocking, spray crashing onto people who got too close.  After our encounter of the night before, we were wary to answer any shop keeper that spoke to us, enquiring in many languages if we were French, German or English (I even got asked if I was from China) but the Old City is remarkable and it was a lot of fun to traverse.  We stopped for an early dinner (due to our budgeting, we were restricted to two meals a day if we wanted beer with dinner) and then wandered the streets some more, finding lovely cat houses the city had installed in various parks, where one could watch the cats for hours.

One of the cats in the cat house.

  It added a really nice touch to the city.  I paid for the hostel when we got back (this time on credit card, as I had already pre-paid it before we left) and was miffed when she tried to charge me an 18% commission on it.  I disputed this, as my trusty website for booking hotels has never done this to me before, and she eventually backed down, making us tea (I suppose as an apology).  It had been the same earlier that day when a tour had tried to pull us in the next day.  I probably would have booked it, but we didn’t have the cash, and I was not being charged for a company’s use of credit.  That is ridiculous.  It was a good thing we didn’t book it in the end (although credit card temptation was strong) as the next day, heavy rains accompanied the winds, making the night and morning quite unpleasant.

Wind and waves.

                It was more unpleasant due to the fact that one of the windows hadn’t been shut properly, and was leaking into our room.  Joe slammed the window, moved the luggage, and I put the bath mat underneath it in hopes it wouldn’t spread.  It died down a little, but was a restless night nonetheless.  We decided to eat breakfast at our hostel the next morning (due to weather issues) and the food was great, coffee ok, and views non-existent.  We headed back upstairs after breakfast to see if the rain would die down, and to our dismay, found another leak in the roof.  Joe went to get the owner, who merely shrugged and said that it was an old building- nearly 50 years (which was a joke when you considered how old everything else in Antalya was) so with nothing to be done, Joe asked for a bucket which we placed under the leak. 

View of the marina.

                The rain died down by noon, although the winds remained, and we headed into the elements for a beautiful stroll along the cliffs.  With no real destination in mind,  we arrived at the beach a couple of hours later and strolled along for a bit, before retracing our steps, stopping for salep (a delicious local hot beverage) and an afternoon rest.  Since it was New Year’s Eve, we decided on a late dinner (with hopes that maybe something was happening) and splurged: two beers each with our meal.  It was highly enjoyable, but afterwards the weather was taking a turn for the worse, and since we had no money anyways for a night out, we headed back, watched the Lego Movie and called it a night.  It sounded like fireworks went off at midnight, but neither of us got up to check.  (Like all modern trilogies- this last one has been split into two)