After the last short vacation in April and ccol weather in Germany I literaly counted days till beach vacation. This time we dicided to spend it with family from Russia and it is hard to find more appropriate lacation than Turkei. Erdogan is balancing between west and east between democracy and dictatorship and geting there for both us and family was super easy.
Hotel
We chose Karmir hotel 15 minutes away from Kemer city near Antalya. The price was lower than average, so we didn’t expect much from it, but it was well above the expectations. Yes, it is on the second line from beach, has small territory and reasly overcrowded. However food was tasty, drinks cold, beach was very comfortable with bar at the cornerm, and staff was nice.
Boat
In the middle of the trip we took a boat toor on a ship in pirates style. It took the hole day with sightseeing, swimming in the open see, dinner on board and Foam Party afterwards. I have no idea why 10 minutes ride on banana boat has the same price have the sama price as a day-long tour, but definitely people who organised our tour did really good job. I really enjoyed the trip
Antalia
At the end of vacation we persuaded our children to stay with grandmas and todether with wife drive to Antalia. Our first destination was the harbour in an old town. See, two small lighthouses, smell and warer sound were trully magnificent. However it was soo hot on sun that we dicided to strall around old town. Curvy streets with old pavement and small buioldings with balkonies were nice, but markets are everywhere and sellers literally dragged me by the hand into their shops. After reaching Hadrian’s Gate we desided to visit Duden’s lower waterfall. That is an amazing view of the watter falling down from the cliff mixing with seewater
Censorship
Before the trip I read that you need to pay for wifi access in hotel, so I decided to use roaming package instead. T-Mobile told me that I need a contract first and my pre-paid tarif is not appropriate. Therefore, I bought roaming from Tinkoff Mobile. But it turned out that even I used Turkisch cell operator, I got russian IP and russian censorschip. Saying nothing about access to BBC or DW news, I have lost even access to my own website hosted by amazon. Not sure which side did it but I dive deeply in all that pain with accesses russians are facing every day both from goverment who wants to control all sides of public sphere, and from western companies, who don’t want any risks dealing with russia. Luckily, with free wifi in hotel lobby I moved my website on other hosting, and to get a news there are thousands ways.
Atatürk
It’s our third time in Antalia and I was surprised this time by so called Turkish night when everywhere around hotel you can see huge Turkish flags and portraits of the first Turkish president Atatürk and in the evening a program with dansing soldiers are waiting for you. Near the airport amont all this symbols you can see another huge portrait with the same size as Atatürk – current president Recep Erdogan. After Soviet Union with Lenin on every wall and current russia with its nationalism and cult of personality I see dangerous signals in Turkei. But probably
Russia and Ukraine
Very interesting that near all hotels russian and Ukranian flags are located in Turkei nearby. I think it is a government line to keep them both together and looks very strange now after three and a half years of wars. But even more interesting that tourists from both countries were togeter at the same beach, same pool, same stage during the evening entertainment program. I have heard many estimations that after war it will tool a lot of time for reconsiliation of both nations, but maybe without propaganda, it will go much faster.