Turkish holiday

I’ve just come back from a week in Turkey as recommended by Will in response to an earlier post. My brother, his girlfriend, my wife and I rented the beautiful ‘Jasmine J‘ villa in Hisaronu, a town in a mountain valley located very near to Fethiye and Oludeniz, the latter being where the famous ‘blue lagoon‘ is located that you always see in Turkish tourist literature.

The holiday was booked very last minute, so we didn’t quite know what to expect. I did a little research and found a couple of websites with pictures of the villa and we all agreed that it looked fantastic. Maggie at Babadag Villas.com was extremly helpful and always quick to respond to our emails and text messages. Once we had booked our flights, she arranged transfers from Dalaman airport with Lagoon Travel (£15 each for a return journey) which is about an hour away from the villa.

I always thought that last minute holidays were cheaper to book than if you planned ahead, but I’m no longer convinced. Unfortunately, for the days we wanted to fly out and back the only airline that seemed to offer anything was First Choice Airways, an airline that didn’t strike me as being at the pinnacle of the air transport industry. Tickets were around £275 each, with a bit extra added on for in-flight meals. If you’re flying First Choice I would recommend not buying the meal – my vegetarian dish on the way out was some kind of strange roast potato tomato hotpot which included small pickled onions! Not the best, especially for the money you pay – you’re better off buying and eating something before you leave. On the way back, a the guy sitting next to me ended up using a sick-bag in the middle of the aisle because he thought the sausage and mash was so grim! If you’re going to get hungry, take a snack with you; the flight is only 3.5 to 4 hours. In-flight drinks are a rip-off, with small 15cl cans of fizzy drink being sold at close to a pound each. Still, all said, beggars can’t be choosers and First Choice did get us to Dalaman on time.

A guy from Lagoon Travel met us at the airport and took us on the hour-long drive to Hisaronu. It was nighttime when we arrived at the villa, and we couldn’t see much – the first thing we noticed was the fact that the road directly outside looked like it had just been dug up! There is obviously a lot of construction going on in the town and Jasmine J is located right at the edge of the new developments. This is bad from an immediate impression of the place but when we woke up and next day and saw our view of Badabag mountain we were very glad – it’s a beautiful view.

The villa itself was absolutely fantastic, with pretty much everything you could need. We couldn’t get the sound on the television to work but it didn’t matter – we spent so little time indoors that it was irrelevant. The villa is part of a larger complex; each has its own beautiful swimming pool and there is also access to a larger pool shared by all of the villas. There are three bedrooms, three bathrooms, a big kitchen, inflatables for the pool, a Turkish seating area outside and an indoor table with four seats, perfect for playing a holiday-long Uno game. Trevor finally one this on the last hand (very lucky, I think) and was helped by Zoe’s incredible one-hand score late on in the match (you can see this with a star by it on the scoresheet). Great fun.

Unfortunately, Hisaronu itself is very much a little Britain. Finding good traditional Turkish food wasn’t easy when pretty much every restaurant and bar had screaming signs about their English breakfasts, Sunday roasts etc. One awful shop is even called Del Boy’s and the owner thinks it’s great to shout “lovely jubbly, cheaper than chips” pretty much every time you walk by. When he said “cheaper than a Paki shop” on one occasion as I wondered by I decided never to go in there; the worst thing about it is that somebody from the UK must have taught him this. Almost everyone here that doesn’t own a shop or restaurant is British – for us it wasn’t so good but I would think that for young families who just want a little bit of sunshine with all the comforts of home this could be an ideal place. Two restaurants of note were Cafe Almond, which served fantastic Halloumi (or Hellim as it was called on the menu) and had a very friendly owner who used to work at Ozer on Regent Street in London, and Tango, an Italian restaurant with great service that was further on into the town. We did manage to venture out one evening to a restaurant called the White Dolphin where we had some great seafood – it’s a taxi ride away, the other side of Oludeniz, but it’s worth going there for the sunsets alone – take a look at this snap taken just outside the restaurant.

With so much competition the bars have to try and outdo each other to take your Efes money. We spent a couple of nights at the Ata Bar, which was surprisingly located right opposite the town mosque as it seemed to be the noisiest place in town, watching bad pop bands (“Knock, knock, knocking on Harold’s door…”) and a very dodgy drag queen. Likewise on the gimmick front, the Parrot Bar asks you to ‘come in and chat to our parrots’ which I did but unfortunately they didn’t talk back.

The beach at Oludeniz was absolutely amazing. It’s a 12 to 15 YTL taxi ride (about £7) from the villa but makes a fantastic change from lying around the lovely pool. The area is actually a national park, so you have to pay a small amount to gain entrance, but once in you can lie on the beach, bathe with the fish in the gorgeous lagoon or take part in all manner of watersports – banana boats, rubber rings, parasailing etc. We spent a lovely day there and looking back it would have been good to have made it there more than once.

Although primarily we were on a pool-lounging, relaxing holiday, we decided to take a trip with a local tour company and plumped for the ‘Jeep Safari‘ through Lagoon Travel. They actually booked us in with a company called Metrolya Travel who offer a number of different activities in the area. Our driver, Orkun, picked us up early in the morning and took us on what I thought was a bit of a mixed trip. We joined a number of other jeeps and set off dangerously racing each other on the streets of Turkey; our driver was distracted by talking to one of our fellow passengers and nearly crashed into the back of another jeep before we’d gone too far! I was disappointed to learn from our tour guide, Ali G (no, really) that our trip wouldn’t contain much of an explanation about where we were or what we were seeing, especially as he told us this as we stood upposite some fascinating ruins in the side of a mountain. He also told me we would get dirty and wet – which we did – which I was a bit miffed at as we’d brought our cameras etc along and weren’t expecting it. Getting dirty and wet is good fun, especially on such a hot day, but a bit of warning wouldn’t go amiss!

The itinerary of the trip consisted of a visit to a trout farm and a chance to by beer/ food, a trip down country roads and breathing in half of them as the jeeps circled round and round with the sole purpose of kicking up dust (not good), a visit to an amazing gorge (really worth seeing) and lunch, a ride through a river on the jeeps and a chance to get washed in the river mud, a trip to a carpet cooperative and the chance to buy some Turkish rugs (I think they must have been on the take for this) and a stop at a petrol station with a swimming pool (no, really) while the Jeeps were cleaned. Everywhere we went people waved at us and children came out of their houses to see if we would throw them sweets (which many people did) which was pretty cool. It was quite a fun day but I did get a little moody with the deliberate dust bowl event – call me fussy, but I don’t think a lungful of Turkey tarmac is the healthiest thing for you. However, I’d much rather a trip where you get an explanation of what you’re seeing and one that doesn’t deliberately exploit you by dropping you at carpet shops, no matter how good the carpets are.

All in all we had a fun holiday – I definitely felt relaxed after being away and it was great to get so much lounging done. I completely recommend the Jasmine J villa and I would guess that the other villas offered by Babadag Villas are of an equally high standard. Thanks for a great stay!