On our Way West!

Hello!

Lovely view of the mountains leaving Adana

Temple of Zeus we passed along the way

Have we had the conversation yet on how I HATE being cold?  Well, guess what?!  We are in a quaint and charming B&B clinging precipitously to the hillside, and it’s cold in here.  And truly, I am really tired of being cold.  If I sound more than a bit cranky, it’s because I am.  Sorry.  Fortunately, it’s only for one night but I am now re-thinking some of our other quaint and charming places we have yet to visit.  (I really do, generally, prefer q & c over hotel chains, but at least I know we will be warm in a chain hotel!) 

More temple; quite a wall!

Temple of Zeus

But to begin with today.  Up this morning about 6:30 am, bathed (I LOVE that bathtub!), breakfasted in the Executive Lounge and ready to go by 8:30 am.  For some reason unbeknownst to us, it took the front desk folks a while to put our bill together, but eventually everything was done, and we were on our way.  It wasn’t too hard getting out of Adana this morning, and at least the wind was not blowing.  We took the tollway from Adana to Mersin, as I didn’t really want to drive through all that traffic and stop lights yet again, and we had a long way to go today.  The drive from Adana to Alanya, where we are spending the night, is about 6½ hours – and that includes the tollway stretch.  Basically fairly good driving conditions – it got up to as high as 15 degrees C today!!  Which is somewhere close to 60 degrees F, according to Robert.  There were even times when we stopped the car for some reason or another, and I didn’t need my gloves or my ear muffs!  Wow! 

Pictures along the coast

Things are progressing.

Got to Alanya around 3:30 pm and needed to find our boutique hotel – Villa Turka.  Naturally, it is in the old part of town, and up – and I mean up – a hill. 

Castle ruins on a hilltop

Heading into Alanya

Red tower; view from the hotel

Our room

Finally got to the end of my driving tether at the same time we reached the hotel.  And of course, we still needed to climb up “a hundred” steps.  Great!  More good news!  One of the gals whose family owns the place actually got in her car parked who knows where, and came down and picked up our luggage and Robert, and got them all back to the hotel.  Our room/suite is very strange, and I’m not exactly sure where it begins and ends, as some of it is outside, and closed off to the elements only with plastic or curtains.  We do have a fireplace, but it’s actually outside of our bedroom, so don’t think that’s going to prove very helpful.  In order to get hot water, we had to literally run the faucet for going on 15 minutes.  And being in a drought-stricken country, that was very painful for me to do in the first place!  Looks like another night in the silk long undies.  UGH.

As it was getting on for 4 pm, we decided to walk down past the Red Tower and see what there was to see in town.  Alanya is really a very attractive city that has apparently been discovered by what we lovingly call, the Scandawegians.  Lots of ornate tourist hotels in this area.  We walked down around the Red Tower, and reached the sea shore.  There were actually some sightseeing boats out in the harbor and it was really lovely.  There is also a castle at the top of the hill, but as we had such a tricky descent over very rocky streets, we decided that was about as far as we wanted to go. 

Red Tower from hotel

Quite a downhill!

Double click to see the details!  Like the shoes?

More of the path downhill

It being now about 5 pm, we decided, as we hadn’t had any lunch, that dinner was definitely in order.  Went to Rithem which was right on the seashore, and it was really an excellent choice (although the restaurant itself was also cold as ice!)  We started with an order of roasted peppers and an order of roasted eggplant and they were both superb.  Then the waiter brought out a selection of fish for R to take a look at, and he chose a red snapper that was fried in a light batter.  I had their steak “strips” that were nicely cooked and served in a mushroom sauce with mashed potatoes.  We finally had a bottle of our favorite (from last time) Turkish wine – called Buzbag!  Just love the name, and it was as good as we remembered it.  For dessert, they brought us a very nice fruit plate that we both enjoyed very much. 

Fortification walls & boat wells for ship building

Love the fencing!

Fish of the day!

Peppers and eggplant and olives

R's red snapper dinner!

My steak and mushrooms

Nice fruit plate to share!

One last photo from the hotel!

Then, we found a taxi right next to the pier which we took all the way back up to our hotel, and believe me, it was definitely worth the price!  Now I am trying to get the blog posted while freezing; we’ll see how it goes!

Tomorrow, off to Side and Antalya and hopefully heat!

Much love,

m

xxx