DAYS 82-87, WED APRIL 21ST TO MON APRIL 26TH 2021 – Antalya, new friends, trip along the coast and change of all plans?

Ok, so we got to Antalya and to a clean, but bit boring Airbnb in the old town. Streets are still quite empty of tourists and most of them seem to be Russian. The street vendors start by talking in Russian and laugh when I tell them in Russian I do not understand Russian.. Well one did manage to say something pretty racist also in Finnish. The weather is great and the old city looks nice. The port is right next to out place, but looks a bit sad as all the ships and boats for tourists stand empty waiting for customers. 

Looks pretty but quite empty here, we could go down and have a beer?

Yes, beer here is nice

I did see one of the ships going to the sea with few people on board. Restaurants are still closed, so it is again takeaway and I am getting more and more bored with it. We are getting also a bit worried about the curfew as we are also now with the residence permit should follow it. Luckily so far the police has not checked our passports for the arrival date. In theory we have until end of April to be “tourists” and after that they might notice we now need the residence permits. We took several walks around and found some nice park and other areas, but I was getting more restless and wanting some more peaceful place. 

Park by the sea seemed nice for jogging

Also the Airbnb was a bit boring. There were several rooms for the guests, but no common room in addition to the kitchen and we really did not get to know anyone. The host was seen few times but was clearly not interested in the guests too much. We booked another place further away from the center and closer to the Lara beach.

Now the curfew was also on Friday because of the national day, a long stay indoors or taking the risk was ahead of us. On the morning of national day we took a taxi through the empty streets and houses coloured by even more national flags.

Even more national flags than normally

 The taxi driver told us the police was getting more strict with the tourists as in Antalya there are lot of foreigners living who have been going out in the curfew even though they were not tourist. We got a bit worried at this point. Also the student groups were full of all kinds of rumours. Luckily no police stopped us on the way and after some searching we found the new place. Sadly due the restrictions the pool of the house was closed. I mean if we had curfew we could have at least gone to the yard pool, but no..

View from the balcony to the empty pool

Luckily the apartment turned out very nice, our room large and there was also a spacious balcony. Our hosts were also super nice couple. Another Ahmad from Jordania with his girlfiend Vafa from Iran. Such a lovely and friendly people I have to say. We decided to at least take a walk around the area as we knew visiting a shop was allowed. We walked for a while and then decided to get closer to the beach.

We even found a tiny forest on the way to the beach

Our hosts had told us it was 15min bus ride, but to us it seemed we could maybe walk there also and we were not wrong. After a maybe 25min walk we were at the beach. The way there was really hot, between apartment building and some back yard roads. The beach seemed long and mostly empty. Area for tourists had some people and the free beach also, but really not too many. Most again seemed to be Russian. 

Finally shoes come off

Sand was hot and water cooling

We got the beach almost just for us two

Cafe on the beach was open and beer was cold

On the way back we encountered more wild nature

To my surprise the beach café was open and we even got beer from there. Other customers were even eating, so I wonder how there restrictions actually work.. no alcohol and only takeaway.. not really.. maybe we eat here later, but for now beer was fine. After spending a whole at the beach it was time to head back.

Next day we took out time and spend way longer at the beach. There really is nothing else to do now. The café sold beers also to take so we got some cold drinks while lying on the beach. 

It is hot in here!! hot hot hot!

The water is still a but too cold so we skipped swimming. After a relaxing day we headed back home. It is really nice that here people wear masks way less and we adapted to the practice quickly. Shop keepers and people walking on the streets rarely wear masks and on the beach no one was wearing them. On the way back we witnesses the weirdest parade. We did not know it in advance but it was the children's day in Turkey. 

Heil dinosaurs of Turkey!

And giraffes and elephants too!

It just keeps on going :)

Car after a car drove past us and some had loudspeakers where something was announced in Turkish. Some cars had bands on them and some were passing on Turkish flags for kids. Gamze ran and got also one. Some passengers were pretty interesting from elephant to dinosaurs.

At the night our hosts prepared us some BBQ. The yard had 3 grills I was interested to use, but we decided it was more practical to do it on the balcony. The yard grills interested me because I saw similar grills with a chimney near the beach and there were tens of them there, so it must be a very common thing.. personally I have never seen such grills.. well our grill at the balcony was pretty basic small thingy, but worked perfectly.

As the days was slowly getting darker Ahmad started to grill

We were pretty hungry already and smell from Ahmad's grill made it worse!

I think I need to get such sticks for myself also

Things look and smell so good, can we eat now? :)

Ok now we will eat and we are all happy!

Only thing slightly taking our concentration from food were the planes

Ahmad had prepared some kebab style meat and chicken and grilled them with some vegetables. All tasted really good and company was nice. We had a very relaxing night, starting actually right and correctly according to the Ramadan timing. Sun set and we enjoyed the view and the few planes passing us on the way to the airport.

Next day we got to the beach again and I started to get enough of just relaxing.. it was time for something else. 

We got pretty worried for this suicital dog on the way to the beach

Too hot..luckily beer is really cold

Antalya is still pretty large place and I don’t like big cities really. I had been talking of a student trip to a magical sounding valley that was going to take place in some 10 days and we made a plan to travel slowly to that direction along the coastal line, spending few days in random towns and cities on the way. By this time we had heard so many stories of so many places the planning was not too hard. We would start from one close by city called Kemer and continue from there. 

We took city bus first and then a smaller bus out of the city

Another empty pool :(

Room is totally my style ;)

We got a cozy, but mostly empty hotel with another empty pool. We started to get to know this 45000 person city and fine tuned our plans. The valley we are heading sounds amazing and we agreed with Paolo to meet in … with him and Catarina and then join the other studenst coming with busses from Istanbul. The only way to the valley is via boats and it is very nice looking place. The trip would include breakfasts, dinners, tents and other camping equipment plus plenty of different program from paragliding to scuba diving, sunset rituals and bonfires by the sea. Visits to the towns and the valley really sounded great. Kemer itself was not included in the recommended places, but we took it just for it’s location. We walked around the soon got goon understanding of the place. A touristic place with beach and small harbour for boats. 

Getting to know places in hot weather

Place is surrounded by mountains

Could we camp here?

Yes we can and the scenery is pretty nice

Not too many people here, most again Russian

We headed to the beach but it was not that sandy, but covered with round white stones. Behind the stones there was enough sandy room for us to rest. The stones look really nice, but walking to water barefooted was quite challenging so we skipped swimming again. The scenery from the beach was again impressive, with mountains everywhere.

Everything was looking good until the news hit us. Erdogan had announced new total curfew starting on Thursday and lasting for almost 3 weeks. Wild rumours were immediately everywhere. Confused what total curfew means we started to consider our options and contacted our friends all over in Turkey. Valley was cancelled, our trip through the coastal line was cancelled, everything was cancelled… I was almost panicking as the thought of weeks indoors hit me.. after the corona isolation and destruction of our cool plans I really felt I can’t handle more shit.. we had to find something. We were getting idea of the lockdown, no moving outside other than to a shop and no alcohol sales for the whole duration. Then talking to Paolo I heard Petro was going to Bulgaria. Our previous plans came to my mind as we had planned to visit the surrounding countries like Georgia as we heard so many good things about them. I contacted Pedro and we started to check what the Corona restrictions were in each country. Creek, Cyprus, Georgia and so on.. most asking for quarantines and 2 corona tests and also the flights were not too cheap. We could fly to Georgia straight from Antalya, but it was 125€. Bulgaria on the other hand was just opening up and asked only 1 corona test before entering the country.  Pedro confirmed what we had already found out. He also told the bus to Sofia was under 30€, so not too bad. He was just coming from a corona test and buying bus tickets to Sofia. He was going to take the night bus the same night. So what to do? Should we stay in Antalya, fly somewhere or what? Well we made our plan and bought tickets to Istanbul for the next day hoping to get corona tests there and continuing with bus to Bulgaria the same day, just before Thursday and the total curfew… will we manage this? What happens next, we will find out in the next blog entry..