Turkey was beautiful. I have a gazillion photos to put on here, but hopefully I'll be able to whittle that down to a more reasonable number. It's amazing how many more photos I take now that I have somewhere to put them. I'm not a great photographer (I leave that to Andrew) but you'll probably get the idea from my random snaps, and some of Andrew's.
We were staying in a small town on the west coast of Turkey called Foca. The 'c' has a little squiggle under it which means you pronounce it 'Focha'. It's on the Agean Sea, and whilst it's not a 'must see', it was perfect for us. We stayed at a deserted beach resort that was run by the Turkish Mafia. We think that because of the lack of guests (we were it until the last night) they use it as a front for money laundering. Our breakfast guy was christened 'Mikey' and he was only the breakfast guy when he wasn't off driving cars and 'taking care' of people.
To be truthful, all the staff at the hotel were absolutely lovely and very helpful, it was just a little bizarre being there alone. And we even had special treatment from housekeeping for the honeymooners!
We did lots of nothing while were there. Lazing about reading, soaking up the much-missed sun, walking about exploring, eating lots and generally just enjoying each others company and no pressures other than being down for breakfast by 10:30. It was great.
Foca has a lot of seafood restaurants. In the evenings we would walk along the harbour front and all the waiters would be out the front of the restaurants trying to entice us in.
Andrew had been before so we went back to the one he knew. And wow, it was good. We would go into the restaurant, choose what seafood and starters we wanted (they had everything laid out and you got to pick exactly what you wanted and choose how it would be cooked). The prawns were divine.
And we made short work of the fish.
We would sit outside next to the water and eat til we almost burst. We went back our last night there for a 'last blow out' and the waiter had strewn petals over the table for us. Awww.
One stormy afternoon we headed into the town centre in search of a cafe for some serious chilling. We found the Kokoloz cafe and spent a few hours reading and writing amongst the locals.
There were the oldies and the youngies in there, and most were playing backgammon. It was a great atmosphere, and the hot chocolate was the best I've had. The guy making them had made a fine art of it.
We spent a few evenings dining on pide and kebabs, hanging out in the sun. The first night we wandered a little out of the town centre with our Turkish take-away.
The second time we walked around the other side of the harbour to the old castle
and watched the fishing boats head out for the sunset catch.
Andrew had been told of a place that we could walk to, wave, and be taken for dinner to a small island.
We found this sign and Andrew climbed up and waved for all he was worth.
No one came, perhaps we should have realised that no one would be coming from the age of the sign. But it was fun, and a little crazy. While Andrew was waving I worried that we'd be taken to this feat of engineering and told to climb on up.
Maybe it's a good thing no one came.
We went swimming every day we were there. The hotel staff thought we were crackers because it was so cold. But it was such beautiful, clear water that I just couldn't resist. It was a blue flag beach and it was lovely even with rocks instead of sand.
We did a lot of walking and exploring in Foca, and Andrew did boy things.
It reminded me of Australia with wattle in bloom and gumtrees waving about all over the place.
Oh, and there was sunshine, something I'm not familiar with in most of Europe.
It was the very best way to celebrate our first wedding anniversary and both of our birthdays. We had a very 'pleasent and satifled' stay.
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