The best summer holiday spot in Turkey

Meliz and I were in Ölüdeniz last week and stayed in Hotel Ölüdeniz. We loved it.

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Turkish version to be issued later. Time is precious in Istanbul.

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In this post, I will tell you about our summer holiday escape to Ölüdeniz for a week.

Topography

Ölü means “dead” in Turkish and deniz means “sea”. So, Ölüdeniz means Dead Sea, but the Tour Guides translated it to English as the Blue Lagoon, probably to prevent it from being confused with the Dead Sea in Palestine. The eponymous Ölüdeniz lagoon marks the conjunction of the Aegean and Mediterranean seas. I took the following photo from the Lycian Way (read below if you do not know what this is).

The narrow channel isolates the Lagoon from the open sea. That is why it is always calm and placid. The streams coming from the surrounding mountains refreshes the Lagoon waters continually. I could feel the mountain streams by the changes in the seawater temperature during swimming. The Lagoon depths stay shallow far enough for children and toddlers enjoy themselves.

Lycian Way

This is a hiking trail from Ölüdeniz to Antalya and is 520 km long. It connects ancient Lycian towns and parts of it use the routes Lycians built 2500 years ago. Lycia (or Lykia) is the name given to the people who ruled this part of Anatolia between the collapse of the Bronze Age civilisations after the 11th century BC and the Greeks and Persians one thousand years later. Read my last post for another example of these interim reigns.

From Hotel Ölüdeniz, it took five minutes to drive to the starting point of the Lycian Way. We did not trek all the way to the next stop but returned after one hour of walking. The above picture was taken while walking along the way. Most of the road was easy walking but there were segments where you had to negotiate your steps through rocky slopes. It was not dangerous but you had to be careful not to sprain your ankle.

Hotel Ölüdeniz

This is one of the first hotels (if not the first) built in Ölüdeniz. It was built in 1992. The following is a photograph of the village taken shortly after.

Compare this with the first photograph above taken 30 years later. You can see how the village filled out.

Although the hotel we stayed, Hotel Ölüdeniz was built in 1992, it has been renovated several times since then. The rooms are air conditioned with all the modern amenities. Thick brick walls separate the rooms and the windows are triple glazed so the interior is very quiet. You may not appreciate this but Meliz and I were very impressed with the cupboards. There was more cupboard space than many five-star hotels I have been to in my past travels. This made it very easy to unpack all our stuff into his and her drawers, have a separate shelf for dirty clothes, and have even separate spaces for swimgear and beach gear.

Disclosure: A university classmate, Ethem, owns and manages Hotel Ölüdeniz. If you happen to go there, please say hello to him from me.

Ölüdeniz village is an historically and environmentally sensitive area as well as an earthquake zone. Therefore, there are very strict building codes. There is a limit on the number of stories (three) and on the ratio of building space to open area (15% for each property). I observed that the height limit is almost universally observed. But, in terms of the horizontal footprint, Hotel Ölüdeniz is probably the only hotel that complies with the 15% rule. Ethem used some of the open space for a chicken shed, a veggie garden and some fruit trees. The greens and the eggs we ate at the breakfast were their own produce. Here is me in front of Hotel Ölüdeniz with Baba Dağı to the back.

I say more on Hotel Ölüdeniz here. But here is a picture of the hotel buildings and the gardens:

Places and Activities

Every morning around 7 am I walked to the beach. The Ölüdeniz Village cannot have private accommodation so everyone who works there lives in one of the nearby villages and starts coming in around that time. Otherwise, the streets and the beaches are mostly empty. Here is a selfie from that hour of the day. You can see the tour boats in the background:

All the tour boats are safely anchored along the beach at the time of my morning walk.

The boats take people around for sightseeing. We had done that the first time we were here in 2006.

Most of the signage on the shops are in English. In fact, the row of shops facing the beach reminded me of the Gold Coast in Australia of 1980s. Here is a selfie with the shops facing the beach:

The mountain in the background is Baba Dağı. This is known as one of the best paragliding spots around the world. Tens of people jump off the top of Baba Dağı every day and cruise in the air (some of them for hours). The above street is their landing spot and one has to watch out:

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Since this is technically a rural village, there is no police here. All policing is done by the gendarmes. This is the local gendarme precinct:

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Price Shock

In a previous post, I noted that everything is 10 times more expensive compared to four years ago. This is especially true for food. Returning from my morning walk, I saw a woman trying to understand this menu board:

I think she actually understood what it said but she could not believe it because she found it too expensive. She was from Liverpool and she said that they would pay only about 12 quids (pounds) for a 15-oz (about 420 gr) steak back in Liverpool. She thought 910 TRY (22 British pounds or A$45) was too expensive for a 500-gr (18 oz) steak.

The inflation has been galloping for the last four years in Turkey. The opposition narrative is that this is because Erdogan made a mistake by keeping the interest rates low. According to the opposition, Erdogan kept the interest rates low because he was against usury due to his religious beliefs. I do not agree with this narrative. I think the interest rates were kept low to benefit parts of the nation. There could be many different mechanisms to do this. For example, I was told that there was a surplus of real estate four years ago. To reduce this surplus, the government reduced the interest rates but the low rates were not available to everyone, i.e. not everyone was able to borrow at those low rates. Publicly owned banks gave loans only to selected people at the new low interest rates. The consequence was a lot of cash inserted into the economy and high inflation. Those selected people who got loans at very low interest rates to buy real estate are now laughing. So low interest rates were a way of wealth transfer from the nation as a whole to a selected few.

The food is expensive but delicious. For example we had desti kebap, which is meat cooked in a sealed terra cotta jug. The neck of the jug is broken at the table and the meat is served:

Fethiye

Fethiye is the regional centre. Oludeniz is technically a part of Fethiye municipality. There is a regular shuttle service to Fethiye.

Fethiye is a beautiful town. Because it is in an earthquake zone, high-rise buildings ae not permitted. Therefore, the city is spread out over a large area. The centre of the city feels and looks like an European city. This is a view of the bay:

There are so many things that I can tell you about Fethiye but let us stick to two:

• A walkway extends all around the bay from its east end to the west. It is probably kilometers long but lined up with parks, restaurants, cafes, and bars. It is especially attractive at night time.

• The fish market is in the middle of a large circular place. At the centre there are fish stalls and restaurants around the perimeter. You buy your fish from the fishmongers and take it to the restaurants where they cook it for you and you eat it there with greens and alcohol served by the restaurant. Here are some pictures.

We had a big fish that looked like a grouper fish but had a Turkish name I could not catch. The restaurant chef cooked it in a covered tray and the result was delicious stewed fish:

It may look a bit untidy but the taste was delicious.

Of course, we ate other things as well. For example, local herbs and greens served hot with yoghurt and chillies:

Certainly the mezzes::

And here is another picture of the place where we had this fish:

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I hope this was enough to convince you that Fethiye and Ölüdeniz are places you must see if you are in Turkey.

I did not mention Kayakoy, which is the abandoned village near Oludeniz. I will do it in a separate post. Here is a picture of me inspecting the kitchen chimney of the remnants of a building which was the house of a well-to-do family 100 years ago:

Wait for my next post for more about the story behind these ruins.