Saturday 5th December – Dalyan to Patara

Breakfast on the roof terrace, although luckily we were inside as it was wet and windy (made us feel as though we were back in Britain).  It continued to pour down as we drove south to the bayside town of Fethiye back on the coast, but it kindly stopped raining as we pulled in to park next to the harbour, which was full of traditional sail boats.

We continued our fruitless search for saline for Anne’s contact lenses (all that seems available in Turkey are all-in-one solutions), before ending up at Burger King to make use of their free wi-fi.  We heard more English accents in Burger King than in the previous three weeks in Turkey; I suppose it’s a familiar place to take your kids when on holiday.

We had a quick look at the Lycian rock tombs

(avoiding the sarcophagus they use as a road sign) before getting back on the road and heading for Patara.

We were motioned to pull over at a police traffic checkpoint en route, not for Anne’s driving but for a routine document check.

I think they were more interested in where we were from as they only gave Anne’s driving license a cursory glance before wishing us a good rest of our holiday.   By this time the sun was out and we had great views of the 3000m snow capped mountains that run parallel to the coast.

Anne has now learnt to ask if they have hot water in the morning before checking into a pension, and luckily Akay Pension ticked that box, as well as having a super friendly owner, satsuma trees in the garden (we were told to help ourselves) and wi-fi.  We declined the offer of sampling Kazim’s wife’s cooking tonight as neither of us were that hungry after the lunchtime burger, but we plan on having a couple of nights here in order to visit the nearby Lycian ruins at Letoön, Xanthos and in Patara itself, so will sample some home cooking tomorrow night instead. SPOT