Back. my review

[adewolves]

Having never set foot in Turkey before I was excited by the posts on this forum, I had never looked forward to an holiday so much in my life. Was I dissapointed by Icmeler? Like hell I was. What a fantastic place.

Accomadation
Palm Garden Appartments.
Set in a beautiful quiet place just around the corner from all the hustle and busle of all the bars and restraunts. I doubt you will find a bigger pool for the kids with slides and it was rarely full, and they won't take any crap with towels on sun beds. If you put them on there before 8 in the morning they will take them off. The staff in the place are fantastic. Jay Jay is great and works hard with the kids, a truly nice bloke. The owners Ali and his brother are very nice people although you dont get much chance to talk to them as they are always doing something, bookwork etc. Eric was there this year for his first time, god I had some right laughs with him, he is such a fun loving kid. Adam, he is a lovely man but I think he can be a bit to serious sometimes and I did see some sadness in his eyes, maybe it was me but I felt so sorry for him sometimes, maybe if you go you will see it for yourself. And finally Alper, I doubt I will ever find a nicer and crazier person on holiday anywhere. I like a drink he likes a drink...so we got on like an house on fire. Trust me this guy is amazing if you like your beer, just hope to god his there next year. When we left walking out the gates I shook hands with everyone hugs kisses etc, but I couldn't see Alper, I was gutted. Then I looked up and he was sat in the drivers seat of the coach, then he saw me jumped out and gave me a massive hug..what a guy and his only 19. In itself the accomadation is fantastic, spotless in cleanliness, pool fantastic, and its in a very private location with a big iron gate to keep people out, and the views in the morning are to die for.

The cons for the apartments. Lets remember this is a self catering place, so you would normally expect to cook for yourself or eat out. They do expect you to eat there at least once, if you don't they will not talk to you, trust me they won't. This didn't bother me as we ate there once for a meal and it was nice, although we did have a few snacks there anyway...burgers chips etc. Entertainment there is really poor, more about that below. All in all a fantastic place that I will be booking up for next year and would recomend to any families with kids.

Eating out
To be honest we only ate in 3 places. The apartments Amigos and Valentinos. Amigos we ate in because we were stared so we had steaks in there. Nice meal to be honest but we had a kid in there that was annoying who just stood dancing when we tried to eat.. I mean right in front of us. As I mentioned before we ate at the apartments the other place we ate was Valentinos. Now this is the restraunt opposite the Elvis bar, used to be the baron. I've heard this Baron called the infamous Baron on this site before, but I will tell you why we kept going back there, the food was beautiful, service fantastic and they treated our kids like royalty, I probably had about 10 meals there including tbones fillets pastas and leg of lamb never had a bad meal, so yummy.

Drinking
We like a chilled holiday so we don't do trips and such, although I wanted a jeep safari, but what happend when we were there, put me off. I like to sit around the pool then go to the bar. The bars we went to were few. We did the Elvis bar on a few occasions, very nice people in there, made some really good friends, very quiet in the day because they don't do food, but when we were there its very busy at night. Went to wonderboys but I found that boring, but we did have a card off Alex in the baron which he gave us and told us to ask for a barman in there and he said we would get 10% off our bill and we did..cheers Alex. We also did dream friends on a couple of occasions, entertainment there was good the first night but the second night it was exactly the same. Be warned here if the guy who does the dirty dancing thing, he picks up a girl above his head and walks her out the front in the street, very dangerous. The two night we were there it was the same girl, the second night he did the same thing but he got up on a table with her but she didn't know it was going to happen she was very upset. They asked me if my daughter would do it...I said no chance, but they can be very pushy in this place, but it was still no chance. I watched a girl from Birmingham in there practing it, it scared the hell out of me, so be warned, lovely to see but would you let your daughter do it. The waterfall with the animals at the back. We went there because our daughter loves animals, she wanted to let the buggers loose, she got one guinea pig and it was just bone, why stoop to this to get people in.

Shopping
I'm not a shopper but my kids love it, lots of bargains and bartering my kids loved, although there does seem to be a lot of items priced up and they wouldnt budge. Found the best on the underground market, kids got them for under half of what they asked without any help from me and they came back with some really nice stuff.Wednesday market was crap.

Food and Beer prices
To be honest this is what scared me most. I heard it was really cheap in Turkey so I booked it, I didn't find it as cheap as I expected, but I've never been there before, but after a few days of eatin quality food at those prices I realised you get what you pay for, there is no way on earth I would get a 19OZ tbone with all the works in this country with a starter for ten quid. I had a leg of lamb which was massive for 30 lira with a starter. I never had a bad meal in Icmeler, the food was yummy and service supberb. I wouldn't spend that much on food at home in 2 weeks but if I bought the quality that I ate in Icmeler I"d spend a lot more.

Prices I found were chicken meals 16 - 18 lira
steak meals 20-25
pasta meals 12-16
leg of lamb 25-30
fish in salt 23=31
beer effes 1- 4 lira
clothes just barter like mad in the underground I saw a bloke knock off 60 lira on a tracksuit but he still didnt have it because he wanted 65 off.
import beers around the 6-7 lira but they were small bottles, we were also told John Smiths is out of date there now so they shouldn't sell it but its still sold there.

The only drawback I found in Icmeler was the entertainment, it is all the same, I spoke to Alex in the Baron...Valentinos about this and he told me this could be the downfall of the place. All in all a fantastic holiday and will certainly be back next year. If the rate changes that is .