Kalkan and around

I got back last night from a couple of days in Kalkan.  My sister and brother-in-law have had a two-week holiday there and I went to visit them and have a little break.

Kalkan is a very pretty town about an hour’s drive from Fethiye.  It is on the coast and built on the side of a mountain so the view when you come over the last hill is really spectacular.  The view from their hotel – situated quite high up the slope – was also breath-taking.

a pool with a view

 The town itself is clustered around the harbour, but there has been lots of building in the last few years so there are many villas spread over the hill.  They are not all attractive and in some ways it would be nice if it could have remained how it was but nothing can spoil the quaintness of the centre of the town with its old houses crowded onto steep streets and the stunning blue of the bay, interrupted by a couple of islands.

There are many lovely restaurants there and the nicest places to eat are on some of the roof terraces so you make the most of the views.  While the menus are a bit more varied and adventurous than most of the restaurants in Çalış, prices are also significantly higher.  Even the shops cater for bigger spenders.  There is a bag shop selling very exact copies of designer bags which they have made by a factory in İstanbul – the average price being about 300TL.  The copy watches are indistinguishable from the real Breitlings and Vacheron Constantin and while the prices are a fraction of the cost of the real ones, there is nothing for a tenner!

I drove to Kalkan on Friday and Kaan came on the bus on Saturday.  Having spent two days lying around and eating a lot (sticky toffee pudding was the highlight for me!) we went off exploring yesterday.  Demre is a town about 70km east of Kalkan.  The drive itself is lovely as the road follows the coast much of the way.

Lycian tombs at Myra

 In Demre, we headed for the Lycian remains of Myra.  This is currently being excavated by a team from Akdeniz University, but the Lycian rock tombs and the large Roman theatre are worth seeing.  In the town itself, there is the church of St Nicholas where his remains were held (he was bishop of the town in the fourth century) until the chaos at the time the Ottomans took over enabled ‘pirates’ from Italy to steal them and take them back to Bari in Italy.

It is still a site for pilgrimages – mainly by Russians (I guess because he is the patron saint of Russia) – and it was quite busy but the frescoes inside are lovely.  Outside, this is Kaan adding to a mosaic that is being done by visiting children to raise money for ongoing renovations to the church.

Back to school

Hooray!  Like mothers everywhere I have finally breathed a sigh of relief as the children went back to school yesterday.  Not that they really require much entertaining any more…Emre has been officially working in the hotel and Kaan has spent most of his time here enjoying the constant stream of friends and the pool.

For the boys, Poppy is home – the one place they have known all their lives.  Sometimes we have lived in, sometimes (as now) out; when they were younger I didn’t spend so much time here and we would mainly visit to use the pool – even renting the hotel to somebody else to run for two years.  But it has always been here and their childhood memories will focus around it.

Emre playing in the pool

They have both had accidents here, Emre falling and splitting his chin (first stitches – more traumatic for me than for him) and Kaan burning his hand on a motorbike exhaust, treading on glass (just last month).  I knew Emre could swim when, not far off his third birthday, he fell in the pool and by the time I raced over was keeping himself up and heading for the edge.  Kaan learned to swim in Poppy pool and though he was initially rather reluctant, once he got the hang of it he was like a little dolphin, spiralling as he swam down to the bottom to pick up coins we threw in for him.

Kaan and his friend (watching the belly dancer!)

 Through Poppy, they meet knew people all the time and – one of the things I enjoy about the hotel – a whole range of people that it might be hard to come across in a normal life.  This has also definitely helped with their English as they have listened to many different people and many different accents, rather than just me and the few English friends I have here.  In these days of facebook, of course it is easier to keep in touch with these people and I often see that the boys are exchanging messages with guests old and new.

 But it isn’t all play…Emre has worked the last two years during his summer holiday and even Kaan is willing to lend a hand when needed.  We had one complaint on trip advisor this year from guests that they were ‘met by the owner’s son’ (only heard about this as I got so obsessed with trip advisor last year that I haven’t let myself look at it at all this year!).  Now personally I don’t see the problem with this; he’s sixteen years old not six, he wasn’t wearing his pyjamas and he’s quite polite and helpful (as apparently another guest pointed out on the site – thankyou for that!)  My mother ran a business while I was growing up and I helped out from a young age – willingly as I earned money, but also with a sense of pride.  I think it teaches them responsibility, as well as a whole range of skills (from cooking to pool cleaning) which are bound to be useful to them one day.

And there are also perks of the job.  They get to go horse riding, diving, on boat trips and to the Turkish bath with guests.  So even if I have been pretty busy this summer and not had time to take them away as I usually do, they haven’t really had a bad summer.

Kaan diving

 Cem and I actually started in the hotel business running Camelia Apartments in 1996 especially because it would allow us to be together – and with Emre who turned one that summer – more than if he took job and I was at home.  And at Poppy that is still true, even if I am a bit relieved now to have a few hours peace while they are at school!

Great balls of fire!

Just when you think life can’t get any more hectic, it does!

Yılmaz has finished work now so I am now chief cook and bottle washer, as well as all the other jobs I do.  The cooking doesn’t bother me, actually I quite enjoy it, but it means I am in from 8am until about 10 or 11 at night which is a long day.  Thank goodness we have mostly repeat guests in who are understanding if things take a little longer.  Not all though…we had some new arrivals in who complained that they went to reception and there was nobody there to help them.  Unfortunately we are not a big enough business to have somebody sat on reception all day, but as all the other guests agreed, it isn’t hard to spot one of us running round in the kitchen or bar and ask for help.

I did have a couple of days off while friends Grant and Dawn were here.  We had one lovely day in Kalkan and Patara beach (18km of sand, great waves), and another day we went to Günlüklü beach and Göcek.  Günlüklü is named for the trees that grow there, one of the few places in the world where they grow naturally.  They are called ‘liquid amber’ trees because of the amber sap they produce which is highly valued in the cosmetics and perfume industry.  They also have very pretty bright green leaves and provide great shade and the beach has been tidied up a lot and is a lovely spot now.

Cem in his usual place

 The hotel is still full, but now the children have gone back it is noticeably quieter.  Until the evening that is when, especially with Frank around, the bar is quite lively.  We upset the neighbours the other night and have promised to be more careful about the noise levels.  It isn’t the music, so much as the laughter which at least means people are having a good time.  Will have to make sure they do it inside the bar with the doors shut after midnight though!

 

Had a great ‘Turkish night’ last week.  We ordered a belly dancer as usual and she was pretty good, though that was partly because she had plenty of enthusiastic guests to work with.  But she also brought along an added extra (her other half I think) in the form of our barman of several years ago who goes by the name of Sylvester (can’t even remember his real name) and is now doing fire shows.  Now I have to confess that I was very dubious about letting him lose in the bar with lighted missiles, remembering him as quite keen but a bit of a twit and having visions of him hurling his ‘flaming balls’ into the audience, if not setting fire to the bar roof.  However I had to eat my words when he put on the best fire show I have EVER seen.  He was truly amazing and finished up doing somersaults, still swinging his fire balls.  Needless-to-say, guests who had come along were suitable impressed and those who hadn’t because they thought it would be just another belly dancing show were disappointed.

Just goes to show, you never know what will happen at Poppy!  It’s nearly 9am now, and I wonder what today will bring…

Holidays and children

Still busy here, which is why it has taken me so long to get round to writing again.  This week is the holiday celebrating the end of Ramazan, the month of fasting, so there are lots of Turkish people on holiday.  We had several rooms of guests, some friends and family booked in, but we have had to turn away plenty more who didn’t make a reservation. 

Yesterday, Cem took the boys and some of the visitors to the mosque early in the morning (I say early, but actually they were the naughty ones who skidded in just as the prayers were starting!)  Then we all went to breakfast at his mum’s house.  Traditionally, the younger people visit their elders on the first day of bayram (holiday), drinking tea and eating far too much baklava and chocolate.  When the kids were little I used to dread it as by the end of the day they were completely hyperactive, if not being sick!

I had another day off last week when I went diving with Kaan.  I am not exactly a reluctant diver – when I do it I really enjoy it – but I find I have to make the effort to go (not to mention finding some of the ‘diving types’ tedious to say the least!)  Kaan had done his first dive ever the week before and was so keen that he wanted to do his PADI Open Water course.  He did two dives with his instructor, completing exercises like removing his mask underwater.  

I dived with beginners, going to a few metres in the morning and about 10 metres on the afternoon dive.  As usual, I loved that feeling of being free under the water and was amazed by the beautiful colours of the fish.  Still, the effort of getting all that gear on and off means I probably won’t go again for another couple of years!  Kaan on the other hand, passed his course and is now a qualified diver and is going again on Friday.

Both the boys are having a ball at the moment, spending their days with the kids in the hotel who have melded into a really great gang, age range from about three to about sixteen and a mixture of English, Turkish and one half Ukrainian (our friends’ son).  Here are some pictures of them all messing around in the pool.  We are kept busy serving burgers, chips, pancakes with ice cream and brownies; it’s noisy and you hardly dare walk past the pool for fear of getting splashed (if not pushed in); and Emre quite often has several assistants (‘Emre’s Angels’) in the bar.  But I’ll miss it when the schools go back!

Today is Murat’s birthday so HAPPY BIRTHDAY MURAT!  He doesn’t want a fuss to be made.  Ha!...he should know us better than that!

Sight-seeing close to home

All through the summer I recommend the delights of trips to the ancient cities of Tlos, Xanthos and Cadianda, the gorge at Saklıkent (‘hidden city’), the 18km of sandy beach at Patara and other local delights but it’s nice when I actually manage to grab a day off and go there myself!

Yesterday I decided to have a day out.  Emre didn’t want to come (far too cool to hang out with mum now…and has the perfect excuse of being needed more when I am not in the hotel), so it was just Kaan and I.  We went to the gorge first.  The restaurant in the gorge has been removed since the last time I was there – much better to have all the commercial stuff outside and leave the place itself in its natural state.  The fast-flowing water is icy cold – even at this time of year – and wading across the deepest bit (deep enough to wet my shorts) actually hurts my legs.  After that, it’s splashing through ankle-deep water for a while but we walked a kilometre or so this time, going through places where the two sides are nearly touching overhead.  The limestone sides are polished smooth by the water and Kaan found lots of little caves to climb into.  The gorge supposedly goes back 18km into the mountains, but you would need to be a climber (or a mountain goat) to see the further reaches of it.

see how small people are in the bottom!

After returning to the start point, we decided to try the ‘rafting’ that they have been doing there for the last 5 years of so.  Rafting is a little misleading as you are in an inflatable ‘ringo’ and though they give you a paddle and instruct you to paddle left if you want to go right – and vice versa – actually you tend to just go round and round whichever way you paddle!

It was fun, but actually more ‘rapid’ than I had expected.  They send a guide with you, and though he was a young boy, I was glad to have him along.  The biggest thing to be careful of is the large rocks in the shallows, on which it would be very easy to bump your backside.  To avoid this, the guide spends a large part of his time yelling ‘lift your bum’ – which we learned to do pretty fast! The water, even further down, is still pretty cold and by the end of the trip (which takes about half an hour), with the cold and bumping, I had lost all feeling in my bum!

tomb at Xanthos (with theatre behind)

We then drove on to Xanthos.  This was the largest city of the Lycian Federation, a place with a history going back to at least the eighth century BC.  Perched up on the hill-side, with a good view of the surrounding area, you might imagine that it was safe from invaders; in fact twice during its troubled past, the residents chose mass suicide over surrender, once to the Persians and once to Roman Emperor Brutus who attacked with his army when the locals were failing to pay his taxes!

There are archeologists at work on the site at the moment – a combination of French and Turkish I believe.  Xanthos has also been made a World Heritage Site (along with nearby Letoon) which must add to its profile in the world of archeology.  There are some great mosaics there, which they have mostly covered over for protection, though you get a peak at parts of it….

I am sure they will discover many more pieces and I am looking forward to hearing more about the history of this ancient city.  Actually, I could quite fancy doing a bit of digging myself if I had the time, though I’m not sure I have the patience needed to brush away the layers of dirt with a little paint brush!

Banks - grrr!

Why do banks always seem to conspire against me?  I have such trouble using the card issued by my UK bank when I buy things online.  Some sites will only take a UK address as the billing address when you choose to pay with visa, others won’t let me put in a UK address for the goods to be sent to (I seldom have things sent directly here as I’ve had so much go astray in the past) and a Turkish billing address.  The latest problem is a new security system that requires you to set up a password for use when buying things online.  That’s sounds like a good idea, but when I tried to complete the ‘authentification details’ I again fell down at the box that asked for ‘UK postcode of billing address’.  Aghhhh!!!  I am not the only one living abroad and using a UK bank card so why do these sites not take us into account?

 We have been feeling the aftershocks of Aegean flights going bust.  Seems that quite a few of our guests had booked flights through them so, to date, we have had 6 cancellations, four rooms whose arrival/departure has changed by a day or two and one ‘no show’.  It is frustrating to have rooms free at the end of August; we get no compensation for rooms cancelled although we could have sold those rooms three times over.  There is little chance of filling them now as flight prices have soared to £450 and £500 per person!  It’s also quite laughable that the companies see an opportunity and double flight prices (due to sudden demand) but e-mail us and suggest we drop our prices so they can fill the rooms.  Really, with all the tricks they get up to, I’m amazed that these companies GO bankrupt.

Since most people now book flights and accommodation separately, the companies we deal with are not necessarily aware that people have lost their flights.  Guests are obviously having trouble getting through to the companies and I have had one room that the company informed me had cancelled, then mailed me saying did I have a room booked in that name since they didn’t have a record of it and the guests were trying to change their arrival date.  Another guest, very strangely, managed to telephone our next-door neighbour, who came over with a message saying they would be two days late!  And another rather strange one…guests who arrived last week, booked in for three weeks, said they were actually going to be staying at their sister’s villa and if we would give them some money back for the room they would give us the key and we could let out the room.  As we declined to do this, explaining that we haven’t had the money for the room yet and are unlikely to get it for another few months, they left with the key and we haven’t seen them since.  Would you do this with a hotel in the UK, I wonder?

Emre

Cem catches a fish

It’s quiet here today as Cem and the boys have taken some guests diving.  It will be Kaan’s first time and he has been so excited he has read most of the diving manual already!  A little bit late, but here are some photos of the Poppy boat trip we did two weeks ago.

Mrs. Parker looking thoughtful!

 

Dust and more dust

So..another holiday company bites the dust.  Aegean flights and Holidays4u went into administration yesterday causing more grief to people who had booked holidays with them, as well as hoteliers and many others who will lose money owed to them.  Thankfully, this time, we are not one of those as we didn’t work with them, though funnily enough their local agent has been asking us for prices for 2012 for a couple of weeks and I finally got round to e-mailing them yesterday!  Guess we won’t now be working together.

Some of the news makes me cross though, even if it doesn’t affect us directly.  The Daily Mail says: ‘in the past there have been problems with foreign hotels following the collapse of British travel companies. Some have expected customers to pay again for fear they will not get the money owed to them by the travel company.’  The truth is that we are advised to ask for payment which guests can reclaim in the UK, whereas there is NO organization guaranteeing our money and in most cases we DON’T get paid. 

When Goldtrail went bankrupt last year they owed us £2500 for guests who had stayed up to that point.  We didn’t actually ask anybody to pay extra for their rooms as they were all due to leave within a couple of days anyway.  So far, despite filling in several forms and sending copies of all the bookings I have received nothing.  The last letter I got from the administrators said they don’t know how much, if anything, we will get or when it might be paid!

We also have had no money for this year's guests from Hotels4u (different from Holidays4u).  They are part of Thomas Cook so I hope there is no chance of them going bust, and I think the problem is again with the local agent who gets paid from the UK and then uses our money for as long as they can get away with it.  Seeing as we are now half way through the season, I think it is about time they handed some over.

On a brighter note, it was Emre’s birthday on Tuesday.  I can’t believe he is sixteen, though he works hard every day on his teenage attitude!  Here he is with his cake in the shape of a laptop which was his present (at least half of it was, the other half he had saved).  

The boys also had a lovely time yesterday doing a quad bike safari.  A friend of mine bought it as a treat for them and it looks like a great trip, especially for teenagers (though Cem and Murat also seemed to enjoy it).  They went up into the forest beyond Poppy and rode through streams and up slopes and even went into an old chromium ore mine, which I have never seen.  They came back tired and VERY dusty – reminded me of the old days when Cem was doing jeep safari...