Day 28: Antalya Beach

It was a better day. As a sort of silent apology, our hotel gave us each a fried egg with our breakfast, which was not part of the standard B&B rate. A fried egg “sorry” was a big improvement over our last hotel!
Paul outside our hard-to-find hotel.

After breakfast we wandered through Antalya looking for beach towels, which we needed to visit the Antalya beach and (more importantly) for our boat cruise the next day. We walked through the winding, narrow cobblestone streets of the old part of town…and then the winding, narrow paved streets of the new part of town. Towels were surprisingly hard to find in the beach town. We finally discovered a little shop owned by and old Turkish man and woman and, with Paul’s surprisingly impressive communication skills (the man and woman did not speak English and no towels were visible in the shop), we got our beach towels.
Paul at the old Roman archway entrance to the old part of town.
Me walking on the streets of the old part of town.
Paul in the old part of town (on the way to the beach!).

On the way to the towel shop we had passed a pet shop with the cutest little golden retriever puppy sitting in a crate outside. I dragged Paul back to the pet shop after we got our towels and spent quite a few minutes staring longingly at the puppy and seriously considering exactly how difficult it would be to keep traveling with a dog…there seems to be a theme between my filthy stray friends and obsession with poor puppies in pet shops…

On the way to the beach we walked through the old town bazaar. It was so different from Egypt! No one followed us shouting prices into our ears and no one threw jewelry or scarves at us as fake “presents.” One man stopped us to try his tea, and of course we were reluctant to take anything. Nothing is free. We were pleasantly surprised when the man was just happy to chat with us and let us try the tea (especially “Turkish Viagra tea” – to clear the sinuses), even though we didn’t want to buy.

Finally we made it to the beach. We had to pay to use the beach at a restaurant located at the top of a steep hill leading down to the beach. The “beach” was a pile of rocks jutting out into the water and lounge chairs were packed onto the rocks like sardines. An inch of space between us and the people next to us is a generous estimate…I guess it wasn’t ideal, but it was the perfect relaxing day. We spent the whole afternoon lounging in the sun, reading, and swimming (and trying to avoid looking at naked leathery, old European women).
Antalya Harbor (close to the beach where we spent the day).
Lounges at the beach, packed onto the rocks.
The gorgeous view from our lounges.
Paul relaxing.
Me swimming.

In the evening we had a beer at the restaurant above the beach and watched the sunset before heading to a great dinner at the hotel next to ours.
Paul enjoying Efes and the sunset.
View of the sunset.

Paul at our dinner restaurant with one of the crazy red candelabras in the background.
We had a perfect table, right next to the pool.