I have just received a booking from
Hotels4u for next year – nice try but as we haven’t signed a contract with them
yet I wonder why they are taking reservations?!
It is strange thinking of next summer already when I am only just
recovering from this one. Still, I am
glad that some people are starting to think of next year’s holidays. The general view over here is that this year
was a terrible one – there were visitors here (Poppy was full at least from
June to September) but they were not spending much. This is understandable given the current
economic situation at home but it affects the restaurants and tour companies
particularly. The Turkish Tourism
Board’s new advertising focuses on all the attractions of Turkey – the
history, beautiful sea and beaches etc – in an attempt to move it away from
just a low-cost destination. The current
forecast is that 2013 will be about the same but 2014 will be a boom year. That would be nice!
 |
| theatre at Pınara |
I took myself off to visit one of
the local attractions last weekend – the ruins of the Lycian town of Pınara. It was built a bit like a ‘new town’ to take
some of the overflowing population of Xanthos.
It became quite large itself, having 3 representatives (the maximum) on
the council of Lycia
– Fethiye, for example, only had two.
Now, it is just a pile of stones in a deserted forest on the lower
slopes of a hill. I say deserted, though
while I was there rather strangely a group of about 30 foreign walkers came
striding through with their backpacks and walking poles – rather surreal!
The theatre is in tact and though
not huge, quite impressive. On the other
side, there are interesting heart-shaped columns that were part of a temple
dedicated to Aphrodite. There is also a
stone with a rather interesting phallic symbol which seems to have been part of
the temple (see photo right)! And then
there are the tombs. The mountain behind
the main settlement is 450 m
high and a sheer rock face – yet it is riddled with rock tombs. I really can’t imagine how they carved them
but assume they must have hung down from the top rather than climbed up from
the bottom – and given that the settlement was founded in the fifth century BC
they are rather impressive however they were made. It was a beautiful day when I went there and
the views to the Ak Dağları or White Mountains - already with a dusting of snow on them –
were stunning.
I put an ad on facebook (actually
Cem put it on for me – I am still not facebooked up!) for Turkish lessons and
have had a lot of responses leading to 6 new groups of students. I am pretty much ‘full’ now in terms of
lessons – 3 a
day 4 days a week is about as much as I want to do. Some of the new students have done lessons
with various different teachers already but – without wishing to criticize
anyone – they seem to come away with lots of stuff written down but unable to
put together even a simple sentence. I
hope that I will be able to remedy that!
The kittens are getting bigger and
walking around – though still a bit wobbly.
They are also getting very noisy and as they are in the room where I
give my lessons they can be a bit of a distraction! The puppy (Poppy) has also grown a lot and
can now jump onto the garden wall (at home).
It isn’t very high from the inside, but from the outside it is about 6 feet above the road; it
must be quite alarming for people walking past to see this dog perched above
them – and even sometimes jumping down in front of them. Unfortunately she hasn’t worked out how to
get back in so sits outside the front gate until we notice her – or a kind
neighbour lets her back in.
I have been busy designing an album
of our digital pix. It is a bit fiddly
but a very clever system and it makes you look through all your old photos and
remember nice times. As so many of our ‘nice
times’ take place at the hotel, many of our lovely guests feature in it. Here’s a few photos – with love to all
the people who have given us happy memories…
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