A Sceptical Mind

It’s time for the last blog post in our series of wedding related posts. After a great wedding day, a few days went by with organizing gifts, figuring out who bought what, cleaning up at home etc. etc., and then on July 14th we jumped on a plane headed for Dalaman, Turkey.

We were going on a fairly expensive 8 day trip to Marmaris in Turkey, where we were going to be staying at Turban Palace down by the shore. A 5-star hotel resort complete with All-inclusive concept, 3 pools, private beach, 4 restaurants, 7 bars, a water park, mini golf, huge apartment area for the rooms and.. well – a shit load of other things! The all-inclusive concept means that we don’t have to pay for food and drinks at all. Even several of the activities were included in the room price! So 24 hours a day, we could go to any bar and ask for a coke, a beer, a whiskey or whatever, and get it for free! Even the restaurants were free (however with special rules for the ala carte ones – more on that later).

So we got down there sometime around 1 am local time on Wednesday the 15th of July and quickly proceeded to our hotel room because we were so tired. Here we were met with a fantastic room, complete with a huge bed, a guest bed, a balcony, a flat screen TV and a lot more – and we even found out the mini bar was a part of the all-inclusive concept, so we were happy to be able to drink the few waters that were in there at this point.

Next day, we woke up and went down for breakfast. Here we saw how nice this all-inclusive thing really was! Huge buffets, specialized cooks standing around making specific meals (i.e. omelets or pancakes), free beverages and all you can possibly eat! It was great and you quickly started eating a lot more than you probably should. I’m pretty sure we gained quite a lot of weight down there! The same principle held for lunch and dinner, however with a lot different kinds of food and changing from day to day. You could even change your normal Main Restaurant meal for a ala carte restaurant once a week, so that you could get i.e. a five course meal in Italian cuisine or Turkish cuisine.

So the first day, we didn’t do much. We went for a small strole down Marmaris towards another hotel where we had an info meeting with the travel guides and where we also needed to pay for a few extra trips we wanted to go on. But all in all the first day was mostly relaxation in the resort. The second day was pretty much the same. We simply used our time getting used to the weather, enjoying the pool, the all-inclusive stuff and basically just relaxing. I also used a bunch of my time reading Seeds of Terror by Gretchen Peters – a book I recommend to anyone who has an interest in criminal finances, specifically how heroin is bankrolling the Taliban and Al qaeda.

But then on Friday, we went to something called Haman, which is a traditional Turkish bath at a spa house. The bath consisted of several things. We started off by changing clothes to bathing clothes and we then proceeded to sit in a sauna for 10 minutes (as if the 40 degrees Celsius outside wasn’t hot enough). After these ten minutes, we were guided to a big bathing dome where there was a large marble round table in the middle of the room and a bunch of fossets around the walls in this very damp room. Here we received a bath and scrub by a trained Haman specialist and were afterwards sent to a shower and rapped in a bunch of towels and stuff – basically like a mummy! Last but not least we received an oil massage for something like 20 minutes and was then finished – clean, relaxed and floating a bit!

On Saturday, we had planned to go on a boat trip with Star Tours – so that’s what we did. We joined another group of Danes on a small boat lead by a local. Here we proceeded out from the harbor and sailed to different bays in Marmaris, where we stopped for around 30 minutes and jumped of the boat to swim in the bays. I was a bit hesitant to begin with, as I knew the bays had some tiger sharks and white sharks, however both were very very seldom seen. The first time I didn’t jump in the water, but as Sara was pressuring me a bit, I finally decided to give it a try. I however got up quite quickly again, as did Sara – it was simply too creepy! I prefer swimming in pools! Later on in the day we stopped for some food on the boat and finally sailed back towards the harbor. We had however gotten seriously sunburned from lying on the boat during the siesta hours, so we were in a bit of pain the rest of the day and the day after that.

On Sunday, we were simply relaxing most of the day. Only in the evening did we do something special – we attended Turkish Night at a local restaurant where there was music, dance and food. All in all the entertainment there was great, since they had a bunch of dancers some of which were extremely talented. However the food was in no way something we can recommend. They market it as a real traditional Turkish three course meal, however in reality only the first course was Turkish and only the first two could even be called courses. A few water melons cut out does not constitute a course! However, as I said, all in all it was a good evening. Especially the male belly-dancer was cool – that guy is completely psychotic.

Monday, we once again mostly just relaxed and enjoyed the pool. Only during the evening did we do something special. We used up our ala carte reservation at the Italian ala carte restaurant at Turban Palace. Brilliant food really! Five courses, all of which were traditional Italian meals. Complete with a brilliant view of the mountains and the local bay – simply beautiful! Monday evening we started packing, because we had to go home the next day, and we did a final attempt at using our all-inclusive rights by taking up something like 8 drinks to our room.

Tuesday, the last day of our vacation, was used to the max by a trip with Star Tours. We began the day by packing everything and going down to eat. After having eaten, we checked out from Turban Palace and was picked up by a Star Tours bus. With this, we drove to a fishermen city called Dalyan were we would try a mud-bath, see ancient burial monuments and even visit turtle island. An island that’s special because it has fresh water on the one side of it and salt water on the other side. Also, turtle island should be the home of Caretta Caretta, an endangered species of sea turtle – however we didn’t see any. After the days activities we got a shower at a local hotel, got something to eat and then proceeded to the airport for our plane home.

All in all it was a great trip with a lot of experiences. Obviously I left out a ton of details here, because I’m trying to describe a week of activities – but I hope you got somewhat of an idea of what we did in Turkey.

Also, last but not least. A cute Turkish kitty cat we saw relaxing under a tree!