Positively cold this morning, with breakfast inside in front of the wood burner a positive necessity. It's amazing how much the weather has cooled down in just the last week. The same pattern occurs in the UK, but the difference is, I suspect, that the weather from day to day is so variable that we tend not to notice whereas here we've had the same weather system sat on top of us for the entire week, making the diurnal changes easy to spot.
With H, AB, and C all on early afternoon flights back home, we packed up immediately after breakfast and hopped in a taxi to take us to Antalya airport. Doing the journey in daylight was very different to the post-midnight dash of our arrival, and it really brought home just how far we are from Antalya in terms of time, how close we are in terms of distance, and how big the city is and how far it is from the centre to airport.
Arriving at 11 o'clock, E, W & K and I said goodbye to the other three and tried to decide what to do with our day. With nothing to see at the international terminal, we tried to find somewhere to leave our luggage, but without much joy. We got on the bus for town and, while we were waiting, tried to decide whether it was better to try the left-luggage lockers at the bus station or whether to get off at the domestic terminal and try to find the lockers there. K, who'd checke on the internet, convinced us to try the terminal and, sure enough, she was right: after passing through the outer perimeter of metal detectors and X-ray machines, we found something a bit like an Amazon locker — I'm sure it's the same technology — with enough storage to allow me to double up with E and get all our stuff in a single compartment. Freshly unburdened we set of for Antalya's old town, determined to spend the day doing touristy things.
We'd initially had a vague plan to go to the Turkish baths, but I'd already said I wasn't keen because I thought heat, steam, and low blood pressure were probably a bad mix; E wasn't keen on the public nudity part; and K, after seeing a photo of what looked like a mortuary slab, decided she wasn't fussed either. So instead we went for an excellent lunch in a beautiful little boutique hotel — where one of the other guests, who sounded English and certainly had a very English walrush moustache, was dressed as a Bedouin.
K and E look out over the gulf from the lookout point in Keçili Park...
...E takes advantage of a bit of shade...
...a sculpture of two goats fighting made from bits of salvaged wood.
For reasons we weren't terribly clear on, we saw a number of couples in bridal dress accompanied by what were clearly professional photographers — usually with a flash-toting assistant in tow — having their portraits taken in the park. Then later, wandering around the rest of the old town, we saw more of them, sometimes posed in doorways or at other times next to history monuments. The reason for all this matrimonial activity — if that's what it was — was unclear to us. It wasn't even obvious if this was an abnormal level of activity or whether it was perfectly usual for Antalya on a Saturday.
After a comprehensive tour of the old town, through the marina — where I convinced E not to get hustled into signing up for a boat trip, which would probably have been fine, but which also probably wasn't idea for a day when we wanted to get to the airport — and through the bazaar, we found ourselves retracing our steps.
Deciding that we needed to sit down for a while, we stopped at the truly lovely
Velespit Cafe with its quirky yarn-bombed trees.
W and K, with decorated trees in the background.
While W went for raki — he was determined to get the full Turkish experience — and I opted with tea, E and K went for homemade lemonade which came with a really adorable crocheted turtle coaster:
Talk about adorable. K's coaster — visible in the previous photo — even featured a cute little tufty yellow crest!
We wiled away the afternoon, mostly reading K's copy of
Get Your Sh*t Together by Sarah Knight and people watching, until it was time for more tea. E was keen to go for a walk but she wasn't confident she wouldn't get lost on her own, so I offered to accompany her — she had the left-luggage ticket, so I couldn't afford to lose her!
As soon as we set off on our walk, it was clear that she had a mission in mind. Having seen a very nice hand-embroidered scarf in a boutique earlier in the day, she set off in search of it. After a few twists and turns, navigating by the merchandise of the shops we'd seen during our previous wanderings, we soon found the place.
We went in and E found a handful of things she liked: a couple of really strikingly lovely stitched designs and, a little more realistically, a nice but not nearly so fancy woven pashmina. The proprietor, spotting a likely chance came over and he and E discussed the various merits of the things she'd picked out. Rather hesitantly, she asked about prices. The man replied that the nicest scarf was, indeed, very expensive; the second scarf was also very pricy; while the pashmina was reasonable but not hand-made.
E, clearly pained, said she could only afford the pashmina. At which point, I fished out my wallet, still bulging with Turkish lira, which I'd clearly over-bought, and casually offered to pay the bulk of the cost of the pricy scarf, which she obviously adored.
The proprietor homed in on this and told E that I was clearly a wonderful man and started asking all sorts of questions about our relationship. Although our answers owed a lot to sophistry — telling him how long we'd been friends when he asked how long we'd known each other — we didn't lie, although we may have played up the couplish parts of our behaviour. After outrageously flattering me, he offered us a reasonable price for embroidered scarf and offered E the pashmina as a gift. I thanked him and said, again not untruthfully, that it was an easier present than a ring(!) and he all but told E to marry me as soon as possible!
The happy couple? Thanks to K for the rare photo of me — normally, I'm keen to keep myself out of shot!
We returned to the K & W at the cafe with a fun story, a couple of scarfs and with E very happy indeed. An afternoon well spent.
By early evening, it was time to return to the airport. We walked out of the old town through
Hadrian's Gate and rejoined the modern world. We found a taxi almost immediately and headed to the airport where we reclaimed our luggage. I carried an emergency repack, moving my camera into my hold baggage, in anticipation of a possible ban on electronics in carry-on baggage, and we headed over the international terminal to wait for check-in to open.
E, W & K, all of whom were bound for Gatwick on easyJet, discovered that their flight was delayed by at least 15 minutes, while my flight to Birmingham had yet to open. As we stood around waiting, I tried to teach E a few bits of conversational Russian — a lot of the flights were destined for Yekaterinburg or Murmansk — but without much luck. Both our check-in desks were flagged at more or less the same time, but whereas the easyJet queues were enormous, there was no-one waiting for the Brum flight — initially and rather worryingly, the sign claimed the desk for was for Bagdad! — but I subsequently discovered that was because the Thomson coaches bringing people back from resorts down the coast had yet to arrive.
I checked in very quickly and didn't have to put my iPad in my hold baggage — the rules say you're allowed to take it in carry on as long as it's fully charged and can be powered on. We moved through into departures where we ate junk food — I had chips and W had a kebab! — in a sweltering cafe. E and I went to the duty-free to pick up a bottle of scotch for her dad — she had decided, late in the day, that it might not be the best idea in the world to drive back Gatwick to Exeter in the middle of the night while she was recovering from illness, and instead she'd arranged to stay the night with her parents — the complication being, she hadn't told them she was going away, and hence the need to placate her father with booze.
Leaving the others at their gate, I went downstairs to mine, where my heart sank when I saw the queue. However, when I arrived, I was waved forward immediately with the staff checking the boarding passes saying, to my great surprise, "Hurrah! At last! A gentleman!" and waving me off to the screener. I belatedly realised the additional gate checks were gender segregated and they had a surfeit of women and a shortage of men waiting to be screened. After sitting around in the very stuffy and overheated gate area for what seemed like far too long, it was on to the flight and homeward bound!
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