So, we packed up & took the bus from Bursa, heading straight to Antalya. Journey took quite a while, and we arrived in the morning, around 8 a.m. Our first idea was getting to the beach to catch up with sleep deficit we had. After a bit of chaotic travelling, we finally reached the beach, where we set up our sunbathing site & spend almost all the day. Finding a place to spend a night was a bit harder. We had to find a place out of sight as we were in the central Antalya, but after a while of search, we found abandoned place - garden, so we decided to camp there. At the end of the day, I was punished as my skin went completely red & burned. Giulia said that at last that skin will keep us warm during the night (which was ,actually, true!).
Waking up next day was easy part. However. getting myself together
was a bit worse. My skin hurt as hell & after packing up, I had to
put on that heavy bag of mine, which weighed around 15 kilos. It was
time to move on, so we jumped into the bus which took us to the
historical part of Antalya. On our way to historical site, with a bit of luck, we found one shop, which's
owner offered us his home, so we agreed and after wonderful day of
sightseeing, we went together to his place (by taxi), and Giulia made
Italian pasta, after which we had a bit of chat.Following day, we took our leave with owner's brother, which took us by metro back to the shop we originally met & spent some time together. Worthy mention is that his hobby was making a jewelry, as well as Giulia's. They had this "artistic" bond, so they sat for a while and made some earrings & bracelets. Then was time to say goodbye, so we took our leave. Our plan was to get to city edge and hitchhike to the next town called Kumluca. Before we even started to hitchhike, nearby truck driver offered us a ride, so we happily jumped in and went for a ride. Driver was heading our direction to pick up tomato delivery, which supposed to go to Moscow (5 days journey)! He dropped us off next to governmental park, where it's security guard allowed us to build a tent.
Unexpectedly guard woke us at around 6 a.m. and for some unknown reason wanted us to move out, so we went to the seaside, which was close by and spent there all the morning. After having a lunch, we headed to highway, but surprisingly we encountered truck driver again on his way back with truck filled with tomatoes. He gave us full bag of it (our tomato diet just started). Waiting roughly 10 minutes, we were picked up & taken to the small town called Finike (where, somehow, people worship oranges).While hitchhiking there, finally one English speaking guy (Onur), took us straight to the town of Kas, which was around 1 hour away. He found us a place where to camp & took us for a drink that night. What a good day! Even though Kas is really small town, it offers a lot of nightlife clubs & pubs! I was surprised how many tourists were there, since season starts on June & we were there on 22nd of May. As we liked the place, we spent there 2 days before we hit the road again. Our next next stop was Fethiye.
On our way there, we took off and spent the evening in Kalkan's Lycian way (historical roman site), with a beautiful but windy Patara beach. Then we were invited for a dinner with our chauffeur, which took us to Fethiye that night. When we arrived, it was already pitch dark, so we chose the closest place and built the tent there. Next morning, we found that the camping place was just a hundred meters away. What a shame, at last we did not have to pay for our improvised one! Once we were ready to go, we took a dolmus to Oludeniz, from where we took a ferry boat to Butterfly Valley. Some kind of tent festival took place over there that time, so you can imagine how many people were over there (At last 1000), so place was not precisely what we expected, but we tried to make the best of it (rather not mention that we were asked to pay 60 liras/person/night). We were a bit of attraction for the others as we were the only foreigners staying overnight as all the people there were students from the Turkish Universities all around the Turkey.
It was time to leave our dream place behind and go back, so we packed up & took the ferry back to Oludeniz, from where we got back to Fethiye to the place we found the other day. We made ourselves as home, spending there 3 days on the beach site. Giulia took wind surfing lessons and I, in the other hand, lain on the beach - sunbathing, listening to music & doing nothing. God I loved that!
After that nice time we spent there, our plan was to move to Izmir, where we supposed to meet with Giulia's friends (as she was the Erasmus student there in the past). Even though we had to hitchhike via 4 cars, we arrived to Izmir quite on time. We had some nice time, ate some proper meal after long time & drank a few beers. That was our last checkpoint, from which we headed back to Bursa - with Giulia going back to Italy, and myself, preparing for the other trip to the east Turkey.
