Watch Your Head: Chapter 4 "The Old Town"

Chapter 4: Old Town

The whole point of staying in Antalya is so that Bryan could get a chance to do some Turkish site seeing.  With only a week to do it, Antalya was the closest we were going to get.  We asked the front desk what the best way to get into Old Town was and she gave us two options.  Option 1 was to walk along the beach – it’s 3km into Old Town.  Option 2 was to pick up the bus for 1.50TL and she gave us the numbers to get into town and the numbers to watch for to get out of town and back to the bus.  It was a lovely day so we voted to walk.

3km is about 2 miles which isn’t bad at all, except there is a small climb up a cliff and then we proceeded to walk through Old Town up and down the winding roads.  Overall it was actually really fun and great to get out and move.

Along the beach walk were closed bars, clubs, and restaurants.  It was somewhat of a ghost town, but there was comfort in the many beer advertisements that remained still intact.

We tried to get one together with the beer in the background but didn't quite achieve the look.

This is the end of the beach path.  That pesky cliff got in the way.  We climbed up the road and steps to where the Turkish flag was and then decided we needed a cola break.  What really killed us was the man who was running up the steep road…

This is on the walk towards Old Town.  I don’t remember if I mentioned it in a previous post, but it’s a garden with all sorts of plants and vegetables in the middle of a pretty urban area.  Bryan said it reminded him of Seattle and from what Brother described, it probably is like Seattle.

This is an example of the signs tagging each of the plants… it reminded me of my Brother.

It really was a beautiful walk.  The city was on one side and the water was on the other.

The Big Man is some sort of bar or club, but clearly this sign was pointing at Bryan.

And we made it… at dusk!  This is what Old Town looks like from above.

We worked out way down a winding path and through the bazaar to the Old Harbor.  My initial impression was “I would NEVER bring a boat here”.  It was big on fishing and tourist boats so there were people everywhere and it smelled as though all of the sewage of Antalya was flowing down hill and into the harbor. 

There were some very nice views though, like this one.  The harbor was located in a small bay surrounded by cliffs and restaurants.

On our accent back up into town we found ourselves at Karaalioğlu Park which has this castle like structure at the entrance.  The park didn’t exactly look lit so we decided to continue walking up a new road and I’m really glad we did because we found a street of Antalya I had never been down.

While we were up in the park Bryan was able to get this photo across the bay.  The pink square towards the center of the line is our hotel.

Whenever there are Christmas lights we need a photo of Bryan with them.  It’s one of his favorite parts about Christmas and I’m pretty sure if he could have a Griswold house year around he would do it in a heartbeat.

This is the undiscovered street.  It was lined with shops, restaurants, and bridal stores.  I wish I were joking about that last one, but there were tons.  Second story windows with the biggest poofs of dress I have ever seen.  These dresses had more bling on them than I could ever imagine being able to hold up.  Anyone who has worn either a super poofy dress or one with a lot of sequence knows that it’s heavy and tiring, these were a terrible combination of both.  It was amusing though.

There were musician statues lining the street which was really cool.  We were in search for a trombone, the instrument Bryan played in high school, but didn’t find one. 

Bryan’s last name is Turkelson so everything with “Turk” in it had to be documented.

After looking at this photo I think it would’ve been a lot cooler if he had called his brother who was another Turkelson.  It would’ve been a Turk calling another Turk on a Turk Telekom.

For dinner that night Bryan granted my wish of having pizza.  Dad has been pizzaed out since Italy and I had seen it around so I really wanted some.  We found an Italian pizza place off of this main drag and it was delicious.  We saw that a woman at another table had an Efes so we ordered two and literally saw the man leave the shop and come back with a black bag of beers.  That is service.  The pizza was cooked over a wood fire in a brick oven and they had some sort of peppers in the sauce that made it delicious.

We decided to take the bus back to the hotel because it was dark and we had been walking all day.  This is always easier said than done when you are in a foreign country.  We found the bus stop and as soon as we reached it so did about 40 kids getting out of school.  We were surrounded by pre-teens in uniforms laughing and chatting up a storm.  We knew what bus numbers to look for and as the buses started rolling in we began losing hope as everyone else managed to find the bus that would take them home.   Then we got lucky and hopped on a bus asking if it went towards the Hillside Su just to make sure.  Well we didn’t know to ding the bell in order to get the bus to stop… and we didn’t know where the bus would stop so once we passed the hotel I found the bell and we ended up a few blocks past the hotel but we were a lot closer than we would’ve been otherwise. 

That night we enjoyed the beers and chips we smuggled into the hotel (they had signs saying for the safety of the people in the hotel not to bring in food from outside or they would take it and hold it for us… but that their minibar was fully stocked for anything we would need at twice the price) and watched a movie on Bryan’s laptop.  It was a terrific day.