A Taste of Turkey - Fethiye

Fethiye is on the south western coast of Turkey and right on the border of the Medeterrainian and Agean sea. We got a ferry from Rhodes to Fethiye and prompty both started to get sick, yuk, although I guess we are just lucky that this is the first time during our whole trip we have been sick.

We took it pretty easy and spent a lot of time sleeping and in bed so this won't be a huge blog but we did manage to get out and about and see a few things when we were feeling more alive.

We took a stroll along the Fethiye Marina, which is pretty beautiful, there were lots of sculptured bushes, statues and other artistic monuments and of course the water is a lovely alluring blue!

One night we were even keen for some dinner and wandered into the old town of Fethiye, it was tiny but awesome. The tiny old town comes to life at night, there are heaps of bars, shops and restaurants and they are all lit up and ready for business. Below is some photos of the old town (in the middle Turkish Delight, which I never knew comes in different flavours!).

There were lots of stores selling these cool lamps/lights and also lots of rug stores - apparently Turkey is the place to go if you want a quality rug! This area of Turkey had a similar feel to Morocco but definetly more refined and modernised. 

Below (right) is a photo of what Turkish bread actually looks like here, they served it with garlic butter and it was amazing! Also, my first Turkish meal, it was some kind of chicken and vegetable stiry fry with a strang sauce that kinda tasted like gravy but I was so happy that we had found a country that actually serves vegies with meals that I didn't care!

We strolled around the main square of Fethiye, which was cool little water founds (ie. the picture I am in) and lots of people wandering around. We also walked along the marina again and there were some huge fountains that do an hour long light show at night - we stayed for a while and watched the fountains, definitely not as spectacular as the Magic Fountains in Barcelona but not bad for a small sea side town!

Michael with his manly blue glow. 

We also managed an afternoon trip to Saklikent Gorge, one of the longest gorges in Europe (depending on if you call this region of Turkey Asia or Europe...), which was actually a massive disappointment and we probably could've stayed in bed! We did dip our feet into the water and it was FREEZING, I have no idea how people were managing to swim in it!

We we under the impression that the water here was nice and you were able to swim in it but it was actually not that nice at all and was just muddy-ness at some points. We kinda hung around and people watched for a while as it was pretty amusing watching the workers tell everyone to get a helmet and shoes, then watching most people just wander on into the gorge regardless. 

The absolute highlight of our trip in Fethiye was a 12 Islands Boat Trip. We had actually booked another trip online (and I still would have preferred that we had done this trip) and on the morning we were supposed to go were told that the boat had broken down (sounded very dodgy) so we had to rebook for the next day, we were leaving the next day so as a compromise we ended up going on the 12 Islands Boat Trip [wait for it...] for FREE!

Anyone who knows me knows that I LOVE free things!

We jumped on this boat tour and actually had a really awesome time!

I have discovered that another thing I absolutely LOVE is jumping off boats (such a rebel). 

The boat pretty much cruised around to different islands for an entire day, some of them we stopped at and others we just cruised past. We stopped about 4 times, for 30 mins to an hour each time, to have a swim and most importantly... jump off the boat! I think we took some pretty cool pictures of our boat jumping exploits!

There were two levels on the boat, in the bottom photo (top right) I was getting ready to jump off the top level, which was about 5-6m tall by our estimates. It looks like nothing in the pictures but it was high enough that you got a bit of scary free fall happening - enough to make it fun but not terrifying haha!

 We got lunch included in our [free] boat trip, some yummy fish, chicken and salads and pretty much spent most of the day either boat jumping or swimming. 

The water was really warm, more so than anywhere else we have been and also super salty so it is easy to float and swim around for a long time without dying haha!

Well, this is short but sweet, I wish we were well enough to get out and about and enjoy more of Fethiye becuase from what we saw it was a cute little town and mostly filled with Turkish people which always makes for an authentic trip!

We are now on the Bodrum Peninsula in Turkey and almost fully recovered from our mysterious ilnessses! More updates to come!