I of course had my trusty camera with me to take a few snaps during my time back in Antalya.
There is an old derelict building which I think may have been intended to be a shopping mall, which obviously didn’t materialise, close to my friends house and so it now has more than a few items of Graffiti plastered over it. I thought this one especially was pretty cool.
On walking to the Beach with my son I got him to take this photo of me and a Seagul. I later posted it on facebook after I got married with the phrase ‘I found a new bird’. Thankfully my new wife saw the funny side.
She had recommended that I visit an Hamam before I got married so that I was super clean on my Wedding Day and so I took my son along to the 650 year old Sefa Hamam which is run by my friend Mustafa.
My son has developed a habit of looking incredibly disinterested when his photo is being taken and we will see further examples of that on my Wedding Day blog.
After the Hamam we walked around Antalya and took a few photos at Ataturk‘s statue. Every town in Turkey has at least one in an prominent place.
We then visited a park which has a Piano shaped water feature.
I wouldn’t call it a swimming pool as it is not very deep and I don’t think it is treated with chlorine but you could certainly dip your feet into it to cool them off. I preferred to dance on it with my son though.
From there we walked under the road and along side the recently built platform which gives a nice view of a canyon which up until then not many people really noticed. They have coloured lights inside it so it looks best at night-time.
Due to the fact I got really drunk on the Friday night at King Bar I wasn’t too bothered about having a Stag Night as I didn’t want to feel like shit on my Wedding Day but my Best Man Roar invited me over to his place and he was quite insistent up on it so even though I only had 4 hours sleep the night before and was really knackered I decided to pop over.
I thought I had better find some shoes to wear at my Wedding as I only had trainers and flip flops with me so I decided to go to see my friend Hasan from whom I have purchased 2 pairs of Ottoman Style shoes in the past and wore them until they became part of my feet and eventually had no soles in left.
Having had Green and then Red this time I decided to plop for some Yellow ones. If anyone is interested in these I can supply them to you so give me a shout if that is the case. They also do handmade bags.
Roar lives near the end of the tram line so he told me I should buy a tram card and he could come to meet me. As I am a bit mega skint these days I don’t have credit on my phone but he called me as I was on my way to the Shoe shop and then we arranged a time when he would phone me to see if I had gotten on the tram or not.
When I got to the tram card purchasing place it was closed so I went to the station to see if I could jump the gate. There was a security man there and when I asked if I could jump over he said I had to give him 2TL. I only had a 10TL note so he told me to go and buy him water at the shop opposite, oh and to get one for his mate too.
As this came to 2TL I assumed I would give them the water and jump over the gate but when I got through the gate he got a call on the Radio from some guy watching the security camera telling him to take money from me. So I handed over the water to them and had to go back out the gate.
Then two woman approached with a baby. He got one of them to swipe me through and I had to give her 2TL even though she was saying not to bother, he insisted. At this point I thought the security man would give me 2TL for the water but instead only his friend approached me and gave me 75 kuruş. Then the tram came.
I couldn’t be bothered arguing and put it down to another experience of getting the piss taken out of me in Turkey. At times like that I really wish I could speak the language but I have only been here for 9 years so what can I do?
Just as I got to the Tram station Roar called and he told me to walk back in the direction I came a little bit and he would come to meet me. However it turned out that I walked too quickly and I passed the junction where Roar came to meet me so I waited further up the road. He didn’t bring his phone so had to go back to the apartment after seeing I wasn’t there. This meant I had a 10 minute wait wondering what the hell was happening and feeling extremely tired and a bit crabit, mainly for the fact that I can’t afford bloody phone credit.
He got a hold of me eventually and I went back to the junction and we hooked up. I told him the story of the tram and he said that with a card it is only 80 kuruş!
Back at the apartment Roar cracked open the beers and we sat in the garden for a while before taking our beers to the Poolside while we had a late night dip.
Three beers each later the beers had run out and so Roar suggested we go to King Bar. I wasn’t too sure about it but on the Tram to my bus stop he managed to convinced me. Ok, it didn’t take much, he said he was buying.
After our first beer though Roar disappeared and left Levent and I chatting away about life, love and liberty. He hadn’t returned by Two Thirty by which time I had to run to get my bus. It turns out that he went looking for cigarettes and the first few shops he tried were closed so he kept walking. He ended up in the centre of Kaleiçi before finding an open shop and that was close to his favourite Bakery so he stopped for a snack. As it turned out I met him at the same Bakery the following night but I will talk about that in the next blog.
Yep, you know you are drunk when you are taking photos in the lift mirror.
A couple of days after we got married I took Aynur and my son back to the same spot on the beach where we first hooked up and recreated the photo with her Kimlik that we took that night, except this time she was a Watson. Poor girl.
Afterwards we went for some Pide at a local restaurant. I love fresh frothy Ayran from metal jugs like this one.
It is pretty hot these days and so an Ice Cream is always good to help you cool down a bit.
Emre from the Marmaris Hotel gave me the T-Shirt because he thought I would like it as I wear a lot of zany crap. I am not really a fan of the Devil Horn’s sign so I wasn’t especially thrilled to get it, but I took it anyway. It turns out that it has been used in different culture’s in the past with different meanings so I wear it now thinking that it wards of sickness…..and as I can’t afford any hospital bills so let’s hope it works.
The Photos
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