A day out in Antalya - Part I

Mustafa, the rep, had advised us what bus to get into town and had kindly written "Please stop at the old Dolmus Station. Thanks" in Turkish for us so that we could show this to the driver and get off at the correct place.

The buses are small and quite busy but it only costs 1 Euro to get into the city centre and that's good value. It takes approximately half an hour. You pass thorugh Lara and then the residential district of Antalya before reaching the city so you get to see a good part of Antalyan life. It reminds me of Tenerife and to a certain extent Tunisia. There is always something unfinished about those areas. Something temporary. Perhaps it's the heat. What I mean is that I am used to completed closed-off shops and buildings with walls and windows and doors. Our weather wouldn't allow for anything else and certainly not for the shanty open-fronted shops that front the pavements here. Like Tunisia and Tenerife, there are lots of mechanic garages. Everyone drives, despite the price of petrol. And nice cars too.

Back to our trip. We got off in the cnetre and with a few minutes to find our bearings [Aside: remind me to tell you about the Dutch Dad who we chatted to here], we set off down the street in search of firstly, the football stadium and secondly, the Old Town & Harbour.

We found both at once, in fact. The tree-lined avenue that you walk down to the park where the stadium can be found, is also where the outer wall of the Old Town can be found. Thousands of years old, it exudes history. It's quite awesome when you see something that old. Anyway, I'll get to the history another time. Down to the park we go and we know that the stadium is in here somewhere. I am describing this as if it all naturally clicked into place and while it wasn't difficult to find all of these places, there is an unknown element - are we going towards or away from where we want?

The park afforded a stunning view of the mountains in the distance, the sea and the Old Town. Spectacular. We wandered in the direction of where we thought the stadium was and lo, we saw throught the treetops, floodlights. Old fashioned floodlights! We chatted to the guard of the stadium and he advised that tickets are bought on match day so we didn't get them but we now know where we are going to on Sunday - brilliant. On the avenue down to the park, right next to the piece of wall that was thousand of years old was....... a Starbucks. I had to have one, so we stopped and supped a cappuccino and made a new friend with the greenest eyes we'd ever seen. It was a very welcome break and refreshed us for the next part of our day out - a walk into the Old Quarter.