What a week! It started very well with a party last Saturday for Jan’s birthday. The funny thing was that there were TWO other guests in the hotel with birthdays the same day so lots of celebrating and lots of birthday cake. Here is Jan cutting hers.
The fireworks were Cem’s idea. I am a bit paranoid about fireworks and was worried we would set fire to the bar roof. They were fine though and looked very nice. We also sent up a Chinese lantern which took a while to get going but then floated off well. Last year, Cem got obsessed with making Chinese Lanterns from bin bags, straws and birthday cake candles. Some of them flew very well, some of them not so well – at which point Emre would be sent off on his bike to follow it and make sure it didn’t set fire to anything.
Jan, Graham and ‘the gang’ left last night. Sorry to see them go but I know they’ll be back – this year if Jan has her way!
School finished here last week so Turkish families have started arriving on holiday. We have had a couple of rooms in this week, though we have also had to turn some away as we had no availability for last night.
And when I say no availability – even the new roof suite was booked, which meant we spent a lot of this week trying to get it finished! It looks great now, a few finishing touches still to be made but with the bed arriving at about 2pm yesterday and the carpenter still fitting the door at 6pm we were lucky the guests didn’t get here until 2am.
I had actually been dreading yesterday all week. I knew it would be a frantic day as we had four rooms of British guests arriving and a group of 28 students from İstanbul. But I could never have imagined quite how crazy it would be.
First, three of the four agency rooms arrived a night early – having made their booking from the 24th, not thinking that 2am on 24th counts as the night of the 23rd! With a bit of switching of rooms, we were able to take them early. Wouldn’t have wanted to disappoint them as they are here for just three days on a hen weekend! Here they are ready to go out last night; needless-to-say they caused quite a stir round Çalış.
So, that was the start of the day. Mid-morning Kaan called me in one of his little panics, to say there was water pouring out of a pipe in the boiler room. It took a while to locate the pipe and close the valve. Then we had to wait for the plumber. In the afternoon, one of the main fuses blew so there was no electricity to SOME parts of the hotel and we were waiting for the electrician. And finally the carpenter’s circular saw broke down.
It all got fixed, and the guests all arrived (some earlier than planned, and some much later!) But felt a little like Fawlty Towers round here for a while!
