After spending some time in Fethiye
we came up with our list of things that we like about it
but also a few things that we don't
and that's the subject of today's video.
Let's get started!
If you've been following our story then yes,
you know by now that we are in Turkey,
which by the way just changed its name to Türkiye,
and we had two reasons for wanting to come to Fethiye.
Of course we wanted to come to enjoy the typical things a short-term visitor would experience,
like the beaches and the food and the tourist type activities.
But we actually had an additional purpose for coming,
and that's to consider the idea of establishing ourselves here over the long term.
We've been traveling the world for four years and now we are looking to have a home base somewhere.
So that brings us to Fethiye, and our list of things that we like
and also things that we don't like about Fethiye.
Let me start with the people here.
First of all our interaction with the people everywhere in Turkey has always been good .
Here in Fethiye the friendliness seemed especially genuine.
The locals appeared to us to be really laid back and easy going and relaxed and playful.
So our interaction with the people here gets a big thumbs up.
Next up is the beaches and i'll start with Çaliş Beach,
which is located up in the northern part of the Fethiye area.
The thing we really like about this beach is that the water was warmer than
the other beach that I'll talk about in a minute.
Çaliş Beach is a very long a very wide and open beach so there's plenty of room for everyone.
And the sand was really nice here making it very pleasant for walking along the water.
And the other beach is the Blue Lagoon.
It's actually a bit outside of Fethiye
and the highlight of this beach is the beauty of the water.
It starts near the shore being crystal clear
and then it turns into a stunning
deep blueish color as you start swimming further and further away from the shore.
When you google the blue lagoon and look at the photos from above you see what i'm talking about.
This beach has rocks instead of sand
and it's a little bit more crowded so we made sure we arrived early enough
to get a spot in the section of the beach where we wanted to be.
We were planning to come to the Blue Lagoon just once,
but we changed our schedule to make time to come back twice.
So of course we're going to give the beaches here a thumbs up.
Next is the food and I have to start talking about
the food with a shout out to a restaurant called ADO Donor.
And here's what we like about it, two things actually.
First the durum wraps that they use here are somehow
different from all the others we've had in Turkey,
and I can't exactly be sure what is different.
I think maybe they use thinner wraps but double layer them maybe.
And the second thing is the price of the food at this restaurant.
In US dollars it was like $2.75
and that's for a huge massively heavy donor, fries drink and a dessert.
And there's a giant inflatable donor that sits outside the
restaurant and waves at you while you're eating.
And the second restaurant is Nefis Pide.
It is in the old town so it is a bit touristy,
but the prices are good considering its location.
The thing we really liked about this restaurant is that there's a wide variety in the menu.
Basically every kind of Turkish food you can think of yep they have it here.
The seating outside is very pleasant under a canopy of I think grapevines,
making it cooler if it's hot outside.
But yeah we had good experiences with the restaurants here
and give a thumbs up for the food in Fethiye.
I'm going to talk about the cost of living next and we were pleasantly surprised by this.
It's not the cheapest place we've been in Turkey,
but considering it's a beach resort and very touristy the prices seem reasonable to us.
The little apartment we rented at the beginning of the high season and
in the old town district was US35 per night .
Our total spending for our short-term stay averaged US$59 per day for the two of us.
I'll put more information about the cost of living for a long term stay in the description below.
Keep in mind that the prices here, the inflation rate, and the exchange rate
with foreign currencies can change drastically here.
But at the moment we think the cost of living gets a thumbs up.
Walkability is important to us.
We like to get around on foot as much as possible and Fethiyie is great for that.
There are really nice and wide walking paths along the coastline
and they are great not just for getting somewhere but also just going for a walk,
which people like us do just for fun believe it or not.
We especially like the path along the marina, it's fun to look at all the different kinds of boats.
And the path at Çaliş Beach is nice too.
The bike lanes help keep the bikers and the walkers separated so they're
not competing for space with each other,
and so we give the walking paths in Fethiye a thumbs up.
I'll talk about the weather next.
It's nice, we like it.
The winters are a little bit cooler and summer's a little hotter than we like,
but hey you can't have it all.
Spring and autumn are perfect, Fethiye generally gets a lot of sunshine,
and we think the overall weather deserves a thumbs up.
Next is Fethiye's seasonality effect,
and what I mean by this is
it's very quiet here in the winter and very active with tourism in the summer.
This drastic change in the atmosphere between winter and summer,
I mean it's a minor thing but doesn't really appeal to us for long-term living,
so this will be our first thumbs down.
There is a cable car just outside of Fethiye in the Ölüdeniz area and
wow what a great experience this was.
The ride up itself is
either thrilling or terrifying depending on your level of fear of heights.
There are great views over the coastline especially
around sunset time which is when we were.
There and even better views of the mountain ranges that surround the Fethiye area.
And it's a little chilly up here at the top of the mountain
even when it's scorching hot down at the base in the summertime.
Our experience on the cable car gets a thumbs up.
The next thing i'm going to talk about is communication
Our Turkish language skills are pretty sad, we're trying let me tell you.
But turns out we had no need to worry because there is a lot of English spoken here.
This can come in handy if for instance needing some type of medical treatment,
or for me I needed to get some repair work done on my laptop
and it was super easy to explain the problem,
so communication is relatively easy and gets a thumbs up.
Let's talk about the community next.
I was telling you that communication gets a thumbs up but there's another side to the coin.
The expat community is large. We thought the expats themselves were very friendly
and we're expats too so we have nothing against expats,
but when the expat community is so large that it starts to modify the culture of the place,
that's when we start to hesitate.
Sometimes we felt more like we were in London not Turkey.
And if you're familiar with Ajijic and Mexico,
Fethiye felt to us a lot like Ajijic.
Let me talk about the markets next.
You of course have the big supermarkets where you can get all of the food in one place.
But we prefer to support the local market sellers whenever possible,
and that's why we like the Tuesday market that you see here.
Once a week this market gets going right in the heart of Fethiye.
And you can get beautiful fruits and vegetables, you can get clothing, household items,
and really probably just about everything you can get at the grocery store.
Of course it might take longer because it means you have to make separate purchases
instead of going through the checkout line at the grocery store just once,
but hey if you're in Turkey you shouldn't be in a hurry anyway right?
The local markets here get a thumbs up.
There is a lot of history in the Fethiye area and really all over this region of Turkey.
You're never too far from an archaeological site here.
But let me focus on a site just outside of Fethiye called Kayaköy.
The thing that makes this place different from most of the other sites
is that the ruins aren't that old.
This is a city that was abandoned just a hundred years ago,
and I won't go into a detailed explanation of what happened here because it's kind of a sad story,
but it is fascinating to hike through the ruins and imagine what it was like living here.
Visiting this site gets a thumbs up.
One thing that i'll mention briefly is that there can be occasional power cuts here.
They are sometimes announced ahead of time so it's not a surprise,
and they don't usually last too long but this is one drawback to the Fethiye area.
Fethiye has a dolmuş system that works it is the answer to public transportation,
and it's common throughout the entire country.
Basically it's a system of minibuses that go on a set route between two points,
with those points clearly signed on the front.
It's kind of like a bus system with some differences,
I mean a dolmuş is a minivan so it's going to hold less people,
but one of the advantages is that they run frequently
about every five minutes or so depending on the route.
The prices are very reasonable, it's easy to pay, the stops are clearly labeled,
the system is easy to use and gets a thumbs up.
Okay you saw a lot of those thumbs up emojis right?
We like Fethiye.
And our negatives might actually be positives for you.
We think you would like Fethiye and the Ölüdeniz area if you want
a relatively affordable beach resort atmosphere
and for the long term you want a place where it would be easier to adjust
with less of a language barrier and more of an established expat community.
But we have one more place in Turkey that we want to visit before deciding where in the country
if anywhere we want to make our long-term home base.
So subscribe to our channel so that you can catch that next video.
Thanks for traveling with us.