We're Chris and Marianne and we've been travelling full-time for the past 3 years.
We're currently attempting to drive Trudy our home on wheels all the way around the World!
And if you've ever wondered how they managed to make nice green grass on a very hot beach?
That's how!
The water truck.
So this morning we thought we would head into the town of Side and have a look around,
and also we've heard there's some nice waterfalls here in Manavgat
So this is a Chris's shortcut to town!
It might have been easier to stick to the main road rather than the dirt tracks?
But it's more scenic at least!
It's very pretty though....
There's a park up, right there!
So this is a lovely little spot here, look we've just parked up.
We're going to go and have a walk around the peninsula here.
But the beaches ...... Oh it's just ....
This whole coastline is just absolutely amazing! And the weather's warming up!
We have put sunshine lotion on so we don't turn purple!
I think i need my baseball cap, just to protect my bald head!
So i did look on google maps at this place and in the streets
in Side peninsular looked a little bit small!
So we thought we'd park along the coast and walk in to town and it's
only probably a quarter of a km and look at that view!
We've literally just come out of Trudy and started walking towards the town
and there's already these amazing ruins right by us where we've parked.
Side used to be an old Roman city and walking around you can still see ruins today.
It's pretty impressive!
Well that is ..... look at the size of it!
Mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun! We do this!
We're never organised enough in the morning to go out on time.
Oh it's cool in the shade!
It's already hot just walking around Side.
The first impression is ..... it's lovely, little bars by the sea, beautiful buildings .....
You've heard us say it before, but look at that blue water!
Hey how clean is that water?
We've parked up by the ruins there and we've walked round
and then we're heading around to the harbour, so this is the little view of the peninsula.
Nice, little sea view restaurant there, we just need the restaurants to open again!
I could definitely sit there and hang out!
We've stopped off for a nice glass of cold, freshly squeezed orange juice.
It's the small things in life!
This is just hitting the spot and with views like this, how can we not be in paradise!
Side is a very lovely town.
It's strange that just a week ago, we were feeling really frustrated,
sad and disappointed ..... but to be honest we realised we're in paradise!
And there are things that are presenting themselves to us,
things that we're going to get involved with and things that we're going to be sharing with you.
And we're really excited to tell you all about them .....
Don't say too much!
Yes we have a very interesting project in the pipeline,
which we may be calling on your help for!
In the meantime .... we can update you on the plans for the driving licence.
As you know, we have to go out of Turkey every 6 months for our driving licence.
I'm just going to take my mask off because I know my ears are sticking out!
We have to leave Turkey every 6 months for
our driving license to get a new entry stamp in our passport.
and we've come up with a plan!
Captain Ersel has come to our rescue!
So the plan is next week we're going to be flying up to Istanbul meeting up with him.
He is going to drive us to the Bulgarian border, we're going to go out come back in,
spend the day with Ersel in Istanbul and then fly
back down to the south of Turkey to be reunited with Trudy!
It's gozleme with a view time!
We couldn't resist saying yes to a gozleme!
Why not!
We haven't had lunch yet and we like to support the local businesses.
As we're going around and a lot of people do say we were just talking a lot of people say
Oh you eat a lot of gozleme, but
sometimes that's all these little cafes are able to sell during these times.
So we like to support the local shops.
So i'm going to eat my gozleme and look at that view !!
Thank you very much for the gozleme,
Wow look at that! That is a structure
That is an impressive structure!
Amazingly there's just that one set of pillars!
It is very very grand there by the harbour and this way is this wonderful
really quaint little perfect harbour.
How amazing does that look!
Honestly it's instagram gold here!!
I love it!
it really is a lovely little harbour
and then right next to the harbour you've got big outside restaurants.
I can just imagine in the summer this place would be heaving!
But it's really really nice!
I know i keep saying it ..... but with
with these flowers and the boats and the blue sea and the blue sky ....
It really is a magical feeling place, isn't it? We are not lying!
It's beautiful!
What a lovely atmosphere, we regularly get asked would you live in Turkey? Would you live in Turkey and
as full-time travel bloggers we say probably we wouldn't live anywhere!
But we are falling a little bit in love with Side!
It is a lovely place.
Looking at these buildings I've noticed that some of them in the pointing they've got like
these little terracotta stones and tile bits, it just makes the building look really cool.
We heard that Side had an amazing amphitheater, it's amazing because it's shaded,
but it looks pretty grand.
Just as soon as we've come in, doesn't it yeah do not underestimate the Turkish heat.
Travelling around Turkey we've seen a lot of different
Roman theatres this one is definitely one of the best!
It's in very good condition, I think it seats about 5,000 people
Oh we're coming back to Trudy
Yeah that might have been a mistake .... it's 33 degrees today!
I can feel the heat coming out, let's just open all the doors for a minute!
After walking around Side i would definitely recommend coming down
and having a look around this wonderful little town.
Now i think we're going to head back to the beach because i definitely need to jump in the sea.
Bye! It was lovely to catch up with Nick and Louise
from Shrewsbury Shropshire which is the County that we live and come from in the UK.
Absolutely they were our neighbours in the camp and the parking area here by the beach.
And this morning we're heading into Manavgat town because we haven't been
into the town before to just have a little look around,
and see what it's like another scorching day down here on the south coast of Turkey.
So after a short drive we have arrived in the town of Manavgat,
parking was easy to find
10 tl which is like one pound for the day.
So the first thing i want to try and do is see if we can find the post office to post our sticker packs.
That's good, that's the queue for the bank that's the queue for the Post office
So just to let you know if you do order sticker packs from the website,
we post them from the road whenever we can find a post office.
So we're all up to date.
So it's lunch time i spotted earlier while Marianne was in the PTT , there's a pide shop just down the end of the road.
so we're on with lunch and we're just coming down to the river,
just to try and see if we can find somewhere to sit in the shade.
Okay there's a good picnic spot Hey lovely, right by the river
down here in the middle of Manavgat. So there you go we're going to start with the laumachen.
It comes with a little bit of salad, esme a little yogurt dip. so get a bit of salad in it,
a little pickled cabbage, squeeze the lemon, juice roll it up like a giant ciga!r
Is it nice? it is a good one!
Lunch part two ... a little meat pide, i think we might have over ordered a bit.
i might have to take some home to the van but it's all good though! i'm not complaining.
How is that one the pide? hot meaty juicy flavoursome nice!
That's the sausage one, i wasn't expecting it to look like a domino's pizza, it tastes a bit like a domino's pizza but it's nice isn't it?
So we just managed to finish lunch before a boat came up to dock.
After refueling for lunch, we're just having a little walk along the river, Marianne is getting
quite excited with her new phone, she keeps ducking off down to the river to take some
photogenic shots! She found a terrapin! Back to Trudy in the mid afternoon heat of the day ,
but we remembered the alarm, that you remembered to not turn the alarm off? i remembered
to leave the windows open that's a good call!
So now we're going to head just out of town to the Manavgat waterfalls.
After a 10 minute drive we've arrived at the parking for the waterfall there's a park here,
completely full of barbecues, i think that's amazing. Okay i think this is the entrance
7 TL ish - 70 Pence to come and see the waterfall.
As soon as we come into the park you can hear the noise of the waterfall and here it is right there.
Look at that look at the colour of the water
and there's actually a couple of guys swimming there just in case you were wondering.
There's a bit of rubbish in the water so we've asked one of the local lads to jump in and get it.
Well he was already in the water! disclaimer - I think he's going to do it! is he going to do it ?
He's going to do it he's going to get the beer can!
He's doing his environmental bit!
So the area around the waterfall there's a number of shops there's some little
restaurants and cafes we've actually stopped now for a drink i would imagine it gets really
busy here in the summer.
If you have to queue in a pandemic to have a photo it's busy in the summer
cheers
Oh yeah, you can see Trudy just there .... there you go.
Oh no is someone trying to break in!!!! No i'm only joking ... oh my god love! oh my god ! That's not funny!