We spent just over three weeks in Turkey, doing a loop from the Greek border in the north, following the coast to Antalya and heading inland to Capadocia and then up to Istanbul. We’ve both been on family holidays to the south of Turkey but had never seen any of the rest of the country. One thing neither of us had really appreciated, was just how big Turkey is! We also said the same thing about Greece, however, in comparison, Turkey is massive. We rarely found ourselves driving for less than 3 hours to get to our next stop!
This is one of the downsides of not planning too far ahead. Before heading to a new country, we do come up with a rough plan (mostly Roxy’s hard work), but this does not necessarily involve going into detail about the journey times between each planned stop. If we had done this in Turkey, we would have realised that we needed more than 24 days to even do the small amount of the country that we did.
Troy (Troia)
After a 14-hour journey from Thessaloniki, including our 4.5-hour border crossing, we eventually arrived at a campsite, in the ancient city of Troy. We were greeted at 10pm by a slightly inebriated campsite manager who, with arms wide and high, repeatedly yelled “WELCOME TO TROIA!”. He was a very nice chap, and meeting other Turks along the route, we actually found that they are generally this happy, regardless of alcohol intake.
The first day here was spent carrying out some life admin, not that there is much when you are unemployed and living in a van, but we did need to catch up on some laundry and blog writing. The following day we visited the Troy archaeological site, which was both very interesting and well thought out for visitors i.e. There was a suggested walking route, paths between all the various ruins, and plenty of shade. The site was the first of many very good archaeological sites in Turkey and was certainly a great start to the country.
Bergama
After leaving Troy, we made our way along the coast to Bergama. North of the city is the
Pergamon Ancient City.
The archaeological site included: the Pergamon Altar, a Theatre, the Temple of Dionysus and Temple of Athena, a Library, and a Gymnasium. This was another fascinating site, which also gave an amazing 360-degree view of the valley.
We decided to stay at a campsite nearby, our decision helped by the fact that they had a swimming pool! Unfortunately, they were hosting a wedding that evening, and therefore the swimming pool was closed. We later found out that the campsite was an afterthought for the owner of the land/restaurant, this explained why the toilets and showers hadn’t been cleaned or maintained for probably 5 years. The only good thing about this campsite is that we saw a wild tortoise digging a burrow right outside our van, which certainly lifted our spirits.
Ephesus
The following day we carried on down the coast to another archaeological site. After spending so much time at archaeological sites, both in Turkey and Greece, we thought we might find this one a bit boring, but it was actually one of our all-time favourites. The only downside is that it was, understandably, packed with tourists which made it almost impossible to get a good photo of any of the site, but it was still a great visit, nonetheless. The highlight here is the Library of Celsus which has been rebuilt using the remains found on site. At its peak, the library held up to 12,000 scrolls! The site also has one of the largest theatres of the ancient world, with a seating capacity of 25,000.
A short drive from the Ephesus site is a smaller site called the Cave of the Seven Sleepers. Legend has it that it is the site where seven persecuted Christians fled to from the city of Ephesus. They took shelter in a cave and ended up being trapped inside. After several centuries, an earthquake revealed the cave and the ‘seven sleepers’ awoke and wandered back to the city. They are considered saints by Catholics and Orthodox Christians and their story is also mentioned in the Qur'an.
Pamukkale thermal pools
After the history filled day at Ephesus, we decided to head inland towards a place called Pamukkale. It was a bit out of the way (right in the middle of our ‘loop’) but after seeing the pictures on google, we were very keen to go. Obviously, this was going to be another very long drive, so we drove for a few hours and found a camping spot near a dam for the night.
The next day we made our way to the thermal pools, and we ended up being very disappointed!
Unfortunately, the vast majority of the pools have dried up and the few pools that were still accessible, were only knee deep and quite busy with tourists and locals. Not quite what google had promised us! The other downside of Pamukkale was that the entry cost is 200TL (£10) per person as it also includes the archaeological site that the pools are in. We weren’t interested in viewing the site as it was such a hot day and we had already been to so many archaeological sites in the last few days, so the pools felt quite expensive.
Disclaimer: although we personally did not enjoy the thermal pools, we are sure that at the right time of day and year, the thermal pools would be beautiful. Or at least that's what Google images suggests!
Lake Salda
After the disappointment of Pamukkale, we decided to head towards a lake not far (2 hours) from the thermal pools. Salda lake is a huge freshwater lake with crystal clear waters and is surrounded by a pine forest. We managed to find a spot only 50m from the lake edge along with a few other campervans and spent the night looking at the stars.
The next morning, we went for a swim and when entering the lake, to our surprise, there was about 3m of knee-deep clay before the lakebed becomes solid again. Roxy happened to take the first step, and for someone who already has a small fear of swimming in any water, the clay was definitely a shock! We are pretty sure the village on the other side of the lake, 8km away, heard her scream!!
After our swim we were sat outside the van when a German guy came over and asked if we had any spare eggs. Thankfully we did, and he came back 15 minutes later with some Arme Ritter. This is something we first tried when we were travelling with Anni and Tom and is a German version of French toast. It was delicious!
Dalaman & Dalyan
Roxy’s school friend, Faith was flying into Dalaman to join us for a week, so we made our way south ready to pick her up from the airport.
We found a campsite by the beach which, in the end, was free as we were sent into the site to find a spot (they thought it was full), but not charged to enter the barrier like everyone else. There were no spaces left in the shade, so we parked up and headed straight for the beach bar. When we went to bed at 1am, the van was 30 degrees. When we woke up 2 hours later it was 35 degrees, despite having the door open. It’s safe to say we didn’t sleep much that night!
The next day, we had a very groggy and slow start before we left for Dalyan. As Faith was visiting, we booked campsites that also had bungalows available for her to stay in. The campsite we booked for Dalyan actually didn’t let vans on site in the summer, so we also booked a bungalow (or glorified Wendy house) for ourselves. This turned out to be the best decision, as it had air conditioning!! The campsite also had a decking area right on the river, with a fantastic view of the Lycian Tombs.
Faith landed around midnight and after bringing her back to the campsite, and having a short catchup, we all went to bed ready to make the most of the next few days in Dalyan.
Dalyan is a lovely town on the edge of the Dalyan river. It has lots of shops, bars, restaurants, and options for boat trips. After a decent lie in, we spent the day exploring Dalyan, finding ourselves a boat trip for the next day and catching up with Faith over too many beers, cocktails, and, for some reason, shots!! We had lunch at a restaurant on the river and the waiter asked if we wanted to see a turtle. We obviously said yes, so he threw our fishbones into the river and told us to wait 15 minutes. Almost exactly 15 minutes later we got to see a sea turtle and a river turtle, who had swum over for a snack!
The next day we headed back to the river for our boat trip. At only £15 per person, we thought this was pretty good value for an all-day tour, including lunch. The trip included visiting and swimming at Hole Beach, Turtle Bay, Mud Baths, the thermal lake and the Dalyan lake with a view of the ancient city of Kaunos. Our favourite was the thermal lake, as it gets warmer the deeper you dive down. A very strange feeling!
Kuşadası
After three nights in Dalyan we all jumped in the van and headed, north to Kuşadası. It turns out, this city was only a few minutes away from Ephesus archaeological site, so we were actually going back on ourselves a bit.
Kuşadası is home to one of Europe’s best aqua parks, Adaland (the real reason we had
driven 3 hours back on ourselves).
The aqua park has many amazing slides, including a giant slide that shoots you up into the air. Faith managed to land quite gracefully, but we both landed awkwardly, hitting the water hard and feeling very bruised for the rest of the day. Thankfully, this was one of the last slides we went on, so it didn’t ruin our day.
That evening we completed a Questo tour of Kuşadası, which leads you from the city castle through to the old city whilst giving you lots of interesting information about the history of the city and its buildings. If you ever want a good way to see a city, the Questo app is fantastic!
After a very fun week, we headed back towards Dalaman airport to drop Faith off. On our way back we stopped to fill up with diesel and Charlie, clearly not concentrating, didn’t give himself enough room when pulling away from the pump and stupidly hit one of the thick metal barriers that surround the pumps. It turns out they do a very good job of protecting the pumps, as it didn’t move an inch. The van, on the other hand, did… inwards!! Thankfully the damage is only on one lower rear panel and has since been checked and confirmed it has not caused any structural damage to the chassis.
Kayaköy
After dropping Faith off at the airport, we made our way to a campsite to catch up on some sleep and get some laundry done. This ended up being one of our favourite campsites in Turkey as not only did it have a pool, but it had a bar and restaurant onsite, and the family that run it were super friendly. As we are big children ourselves, we ended up making friends with the children of the owner and the chef. The chef’s son, Augz (pronounced sort of like Oz), thought Charlie was particularly fun and spent most of the two days we were there insisting that we played catch with him in the pool, or throw him into the pool. He even nearly beat Charlie at chess!
It was also here that we met a lovely French couple, Alex and Fanny (@goodmorning.europe) who gave us some really good tips for Istanbul, in particular the tourist scams to avoid. It turns out they had a couple of bad experiences in Istanbul, and so they knew what they were talking about.
We didn’t end up seeing much of Kayaköy, as we really enjoyed the time spent chilling by the pool. We regret this slightly, as upon leaving we realised we had probably missed out on an interesting historical location. Something to come back to the next time we are travelling through Turkey.
Kaş and Kekova
We left Kayaköy and made our way towards Kekova in search of a sunken city. On our way there we stopped in Kaş for some lunch and ended up camping in a pine forest just off the main road about 20km from Kekova. We were only there briefly but Kaş was a lovely town to wander around. There are plenty of shops and restaurants and we even managed to climb up to the Lycian Tombs.
When we arrived in Kekova the next day where we were immediately met by an older
After he showed us some images from a 400-year-old guidebook on his boat, he told us the price. It was way out of our budget at nearly £40 per person. We made our excuses and got off his boat, only to be met by another, even older looking captain, who offered us a different tour. This was more of a taxi boat service to the sunken city, so we accepted the 1-hour trip and jumped on board.
After about 15 minutes we arrived at the sunken city, at least we think it was, and we had 30 minutes here to snorkel, before the captain would take us back to the mainland. It wasn’t exactly the ‘sunken city’ that we had pictured, but thankfully this trip was only £5 each.
Antalya
After Kekova, we made our way to Antalya. This was the most south-eastern point of our trip, and it was very noticeable due to the extreme heat we were now facing. We spent 2 nights here and didn’t sleep well on either of them! The first night was spent in a car park not far from the beaches, and the second in an abandoned RV park.
The main reason for coming to Antalya was to go paragliding (Charlie’s parents had kindly given us a voucher for Christmas). We made our way to the beach meeting point in 35+ degree heat, and we met a guy who was testing the paragliding equipment but didn’t speak a word of English. We didn’t think this was a good start. However, a short while later the pilot came and, thankfully, he spoke very good English, so we were able to understand his instructions! After a short briefing, Roxy was in her harness and ready to go. She was strapped to the pilot, who in turn was strapped to the motor, the parachute was in the air, and… flop. The parachute deflated and fell to the ground. It turns out there wasn’t enough head wind to take off, and so we were sent to the bar for half an hour to wait for the wind to pick up.
After an ice-cold drink to help cool us off, Roxy was back strapped to the pilot and motor and was up in the air. Each flight was around 20 minutes, and we flew up and down Antalya beach. We must have reached an altitude of well over 100m as the high-rise buildings and people looked tiny. After making a safe landing (although from Charlie’s point of view, it looked like Roxy was going to land on a lifeguard hut), Charlie was strapped in and soaring over the beach.
This was an amazing experience and one we would highly recommend. The company we flew with was Indra Paragliding, and the owner and pilot was very friendly and helpful. He gave us lots of information on things to see and do in Turkey (unfortunately most of this was in the wrong direction for us). We loved the flight so much that we have decided we would love to try paragliding again, but next time we’d like to be launched of the side of a mountain!
Cappadocia
On our way to our next stop, Cappadocia (our most easterly point, and the point at which we ‘turn around’ and start our journey back to the UK), we made a stop at a place called Konya. This was purely to rest for the night, as the journey from Antalya to Capadocia is a total of 550km and would take well over 8 hours in William. Konya happened to have the first, and we believe the only, free camperstop on our route through Turkey. A free camper stop is different from wild camping as it’s essentially a campsite, with all the basic facilities, but for free! These are usually run by the municipality and are reasonably rare outside of western Europe.
The next day we completed the final stretch from Konya to Cappadocia, arriving mid-afternoon and heading straight to a spot overlooking Love Valley. This turned out to be an amazing spot to view the world-famous sunrise balloon take off.
Our first morning on the cliff overlooking love valley we set our alarms for 4:30am so that we could watch the balloons. We peeked out the windows and didn’t see any balloons, so we stupidly laid down again and ended up falling asleep for another hour. This meant that we missed the first 50 or so balloons take off, but there must be 100+ balloons taking off each day, so we didn’t really miss much.
The balloons were taking off from the valley on the other side of the cliff in front of us, floating over love valley and landing on the grassy area behind where we had parked. Some were coming within a few feet of the van roof. One thing that really impressed us was the fact that the balloons land directly on to the trailers that drive them back to their storage units!
After enjoying the balloons for a few hours in the morning, we then got ready to cycle around Cappadocia visiting a number of the villages in the area. There are some amazing places to see in Cappadocia, including the fairy stacks and the monk caves. This was an extremely hot day, as usual, so we stopped for lunch in the centre of Göreme, before heading off to see the iron horse statue and then making our way back to the wild camping spot for an early night. This time we managed to park in an even better location, along a short strut from the cliff edge. This meant we were able to reverse the van all the way down, with the valley on three sides of us, and swing open the back doors to enjoy the view.
This time we set our alarm for 5am, and we timed it perfectly. Just as we swung open the back doors with porridge and coffee in hand, the balloons started to take off. Once again tens of balloons were taking off into the sky in front of us. Unfortunately, the wind was not as favourable and so not as many flew directly over the top of us, however we were still close enough to them that we could have conversations with the passengers and pilots.
Capadocia was an incredible place, not only for the balloons, but for the history and rock formations throughout. If you ever get the chance to explore Turkey, Capadocia should definitely be on the list of places to visit.
Ankara & Poyrazlar
Ankara is the capital of Turkey, so we had reasonably big hopes for the city. However, when we arrived, we realised that it actually wasn’t that exciting. There is a lovely park, and the city centre has lots of places to go shopping, to eat, or to get your history fix at a museum, and some very beautiful mosques to see, but it didn’t have much of an atmosphere. We therefore only spent an afternoon there.
We left Ankara in search of a campsite with a washing machine and ended up in Poyrazlar. For us, this was the nicest campsite in Turkey! They didn’t have a pool; however, the campsite facilities were excellent. Everything was brand new, in great condition, and clean. They even had a fully functional kitchen for campers to use whilst on site. The owners were extremely friendly and when we were in the common room using the laptop and playing games, we were given multiple plates of fruit. We were also constantly being offered free Turkish tea and coffee. Although the owners couldn’t speak any English, and we don’t speak any Turkish, they made every effort to have conversations with us via google translate. We would highly recommend this campsite if you’re passing by!
Istanbul
The final stop of our tour of Turkey was Istanbul. A number of people we had met throughout Turkey had given us a recommendation of where to stay. The camper stop was a car park next to a football pitch, which was only about 15-minute walk from the centre of Istanbul. We were given a heads up that the directions to get there were slightly tricky and that if you miss the turning, it can be very difficult to then find the site again. Guess what we did! Yes, Charlie missed the turning and we ended up following the sat nav through the narrow back alley, single lane streets through the city centre. This was an extremely stressful journey as the roads were very busy with impatient and oblivious pedestrians and traffic; the corners were sharp and narrow, and most of the time people had parked in stupid places. At one point the sat nav was directing us right through the centre of a market! Having had an initial arrival time of 4:30pm at the camper stop, we eventually arrived at 6:30pm. Don’t make the same mistake if you are driving to Istanbul in a van!
After finally getting to the camper stop and taking a few minutes to chill after our drive, we decided to head out and explore. Our aim was to find somewhere for dinner, but we seemed to be lost in an area which only sold children’s clothes. These shops seemed to go on for miles and there was no sign of a restaurant anywhere. We hadn’t been anywhere busy for a while, and Istanbul was on another level. We eventually found somewhere to eat and were very grateful to sit down after a very overwhelming walk! This place turned out to be managed by a very interesting man. At first, we just thought he was quite friendly, but then he turned out to be quite rude (not to us, but to his staff and other people). Not the best introduction to the city.
The next day we headed back into the centre of Istanbul to follow another Questo route.
This route took us through all the main sights of Istanbul including the grand bazaar, book bazaar, past the blue mosque, and many other stops along the way. Halfway through the quest we stopped for some lunch at one of the many kebab restaurants in the city, before finishing in Gulhane park. Following the quest, we were both quite tired, so we made our way slowly back to the van via the grand bazaar, where we were stupid enough to pay almost £20 for two rolls of Turkish delight. It was delicious, but certainly not worth that much!
The following day it was time for us to leave, not before realising that we had been on a number of electronic toll roads which you need an electronic tag to pay for. We don’t have an electronic tag, so we urgently started looking for somewhere to pay our toll fines. As it turns out most places where you can pay your fine are shut on a Sunday, so we risked taking the fine to the border and paying it there. For some reason, we ended up not being charged for the 5 fines we had against our registration and got through the border reasonably quickly. Who knows, we may never be allowed back into Turkey again!!
Summary
We both absolutely loved Turkey. Aside from the heat while we were there, we had an amazing time. There are some fantastic places to see, and the scenery is just as spectacular as anywhere else in Europe. It goes without saying that the highlight was definitely seeing the balloons in Cappadocia, but we were also blown away by Lake Salda and how good the various archaeological sites and museums were.
Having been on holiday in Turkey a number of times, we were expecting it to be cheaper than it was. It was by no means an expensive destination, and probably still one of the cheapest we have been to on the whole trip, but it was certainly more expensive than a few years ago. The biggest shock was the size of the country. Obviously on a map it looks big, but until you actually start driving through a country it is hard to imagine how big it actually is. If/when we come back (not in William if the toll fines keep growing), we will definitely plan a route that has more stops along the way, to reduce the length of each drive.
Looks like a fabulous trip. I went to Ephesus years ago and remember being blown away by its grandeur. It was one of the first ancient cities I ever visited.
Happy travels!
We're back in Montenegro hiding in the mountains from the heat and the crowds on the beach. We plan to take over the coast in September when the masses have evacuated!