Steve and Glo's travel blog

Turkish delight

Posted about 18 years ago in Fatih, Turkey

Istanbul has lived up to all our expectations - it’s got everything - great food, amazing architecture, buzzing markets and genuine hospitality.  We spent spent 5 days chilling out here and loved every minute of it. We've spent endless hours playing backgammon and eaten our body weight in fish sandwiches and kebabs.   

Perfect day trip fodder from Istanbul was the Prince’s Islands. We borded the ferry to students with bongos and guitars and locals belly dancing all the way there, it was really cool being the only foreign spectators on the boat.

Next we went to Selçuk to visit the ruins at Ephesus. We were kindly adopted by a Turkish family who picked us up by the side of the road, showed us round all the local sights (He was a fireman and apparantly gets free entry - cool for us!) and took us to his mates restaurant for some yummy pide. If we carry on like this, we’ll be rolling out of Turkey! 

After Ephesus we spent a few lazy days by a lovely lake in Egirdir, then went across to the fantasty rock structures in Cappadocia, where we stayed in a cool cave pension. We spent lots of time hiking through the valleys with their crazy formations, and visited an underground city which was 8 storeys deep.

We swapped our cave house for a tree house at Olympos, before taking a 4 day yacht cruise to Fethiye. Our fellow sailors were a lovely bunch from all over the world, and we quickly bonded during lazy afternoons, playing backgammon, swimming in beautiful bays and eating chef Fatima’s delicious home/boat cooking.

Today we took a 4WD up a steep dirt track and hopped off a 2000m cliff!