Helen's Review - July 27th - August 22nd

[helen2904]

JOURNEY TO AIRPORT

Left home in North Wales at approx 3.30 p.m. for Manchester Airport. Flying with Onur Air at 7.15 p.m. from Terminal 1.

AT THE AIRPORT

No queue at check-in, straight through. Both suitcases were within our limit (15kg) thankfully. Made way to the food hall for a snack as no meals were purchased for the flight.

FLIGHT

Good flight. Smooth take-off. No in-flight entertainment. Travel path route was informative as to where we were for the four hours. Slept for most of the journey. Smooth landing at Dalaman.

DALAMAN

Straight through to visa control, no queue. Bit of a wait for luggage as we were one of the first checking in at Manchester. Made way out of the building to find our private transfer (non ICR). Transfers are no longer allowed at the terminal building itself, so we had to make way down the ramps and into the transfer section where all the different companies are waiting for their clients.

TRANSFER TO DALAMAN

Found our transfer with no problem. Our names were clearly shown on a large poster. Our transfer was arranged by our apartment. Transfer took approx. 1 hour and 20 mins in a luxury minibus. The roads to Marmaris are becoming much better. Workmen were seen working in the dark, excavating deep into the rock face. This will make a big difference to all our transfer times next year.

ARRIVING AT ICMELER

Arrived to a welcome fit for a King! Returning was just like coming home and the welcome from the Manager and staff was heartfelt and warm.

ACCOMMODATION

We stayed at Sahin Palace up in the Old Village (non ICR) for a month.

EATING OUT

We went out to eat every evening. We visited the following restaurants :

Sahin Palace - excellent food

Sidik's Family Restaurant (in the Old Village) - this was by far the best food. The Diana Steak was to die for and my husband's Pepper Steak was also excellent. The meals were usually followed by dessert of Baklava and Vanilla Ice Cream, which again was out of this world. Sidik will even pick you up at your hotel/apartments and take you home. This year we sampled Sidik's homemade Lentil Soup and Garlic Mushrooms as a starter, and yet again this did not disappoint. It was our wedding anniversary on the 21st August and Sidik produced a beautiful chocolate cake as a gift.

Cafe Del Mar - This is situated at the far end of Icmeler, further along the beach from the Fantasia Hotel (ex Laguna). This Cafe has the best viewpoint in Icmeler for photos. Unfortunately, this is where we paid the most for an Efes, 7tl. Full English Breakfast was 12tl.

Melissa - Had a lovely meal followed by divine pancakes. Excellent play area for children.

Florida - Excellent food, lovely staff. Good deals on set menus. 29tl for meze, any drink, any steak dish followed by fruit as dessert. This was good value if you decided on Pepper Steak, Onion Steak, Diana Steak or even a T-Bone.

Bamboo Restaurant - Lovely meal. Waffles for dessert - divine!

Kardelen - (new location this year - opposite Tansas) This is where we have our lunch on market day (Wednesday). This is a typically turkish take-away or eat-in outlet. The Lamachun or Mix Meat Pide is lovely and is so cheap. There is no alcohol to be had here due to the close proximity of the Mosque. We actually frequented this little gem a few times this year.

Nazar Cafe - This is the park on the main road. The food is lovely. They have the best Tuna Sandwich (with homemade chips) in Icmeler. Visited here many a time during the day and evening. Lovely venue in the afternoon for a chill-out, nice and cool amongs the trees. Just the sound of crickets in the pine trees above. So close to the main road, yet no sound of traffic!

Cafe Rose - Best egg and chips in Icmeler. Her pancake with honey and ice cream is out of this world. Gulsar (Rose) would even drive us home in her car if we found it hard to walk back to our apartment due to the extreme hot temperatures. I became ill there one day having taking to many painkillers due to knee surgery just before my holiday, and she immediately put me in her car and took me home. This is a little gem which you must visit. Directions can be found on previous topics on this forum. Her homemade directions can be found on most lamp posts up in the Old Village, towards the Mosque. (if you visit remember to take her some Maltesers as she loves them)

Alins - My husband had a lovely meal, chicken with apricots and mustard, and I had a chicken wrap, which was nothing to write home about (very bland and tasteless)

Chef - lovely meal, bit more expensive than the rest.

Captain Bullshit - had two meals here, excellent and very tasty. Sizzlers were beautiful. We had the beef sizzler with garlic, and the chicken mongolian, and both were great.

Bonjour - ate here twice. Lovely meals and smashing staff. A little bit more expensive, but presentation was of a high degree, so it was truly worth the extra money.

Corner Restaurant, Marmaris - This is mainly a fish restaurant on the Marina in Marmaris. We ate here as a friend whom we met back in 1995 works there. Again we had lovely food, fried calamari and sea bream.

THOUGHTS ON ICMELER

Icmeler looked pretty, clean and welcoming. However, the canal did look sad and tired. A turkish friend told us that things might change next year if they have a new Mayor, and that we might seen an improvement.

The market has become a little smaller, but still has a variety of products for sale. We were told by a local that the stallholders pay £1,000 for basically 22 days (this is one season) so maybe you can understand why many stallholders have decided to call it a day.

PEOPLE WE MET

A couple of friends from our village join us every year for our second and third week.We met returning guests to our apartments, which we plan to meet up with around Christmas time. All friends have already booked for next year.

A couple of friends from our village were on a cruise and were visiting Marmaris for the day, so we decided to pick them up in Marmaris and took them back by Dolmus to show the sights of Icmeler. We had the added bonus of Gulsar (Cafe Rose) taking us in her car around the sites of Icmeler. We had lunch in Cafe Rose and the comments from these friends were "this is the best meal we have had in two weeks of being on the cruise" - we only had chips, egg and musrooms! does not say much for the cruise.

Met friends from Holland that we met years ago. It was nice to have a chat and catch-up.

PLACES VISITED

We did not do any trips, as we have done most of them over the years. (been visiting for 18 years)

However, we did visit Castle Bar in Marmaris. This is highest point in Marmaris (just above the Castle). If you have a weak heart then forget it, as you have to walk up approximately 150 steps to get to the rooftop. For the super-fit this is well worth a visit. We made sure we arrived at the top just as the sun was setting (for photos) and then as usual at nine o'clock darkness quickly fell.

We arranged our own day trip to Mugla to visit a turkish family. This was done by taking a larger than average Dolmus. We departed at 8.30 a.m. from the main bus station in Marmaris, which is situated quite near to the army base on the approach to Marmaris, and it took us one and a half hours to get to Mugla. Lovely views on the way. Mugla is an University town. We had a very enjoyable day with the family and the welcome we received was something we will never forget. We walked around the town to see sights and a museum. We had bought the two little boys a Lego Police Helicopter each, so my husband spent most of the day on his knees building both Helicopters. When he had finished building, the look on their little faces, it was just like re-living Christmas morning again, it was well worth it.

Another trip that we arranged was breakfast at Asparan. This is a tranquil place about twenty minutes by taxi up in the mountains above Icmeler. The turkish breakfast consisted of fresh orange juice, various breads baked in stone ovens, cheeses, butter, eggs, tomatoes, cucumber, herbs, olives, apricots, walnuts, honey, cherry jam, strawberry jam, chocolate (like nutella) and this was all washed down by chay (turkish tea). We spent a couple of hours just walking around the grounds, they have a play area for the children with swings and roundabouts etc. and a few animals in cages (peacocks, goats, pheasants etc). They also had a very lonely looking camel. There was a lazy looking cow with a calf.

On our return down to Icmeler, we also visited a plot of land that had been bought by one of our turkish friends. They had planted 600 olive trees during the beginning of the summer, and they were also growing a variety of vegetables and fruit for their own use. Water was pumped from an underground source, and this was extremely cold and clear water. We really enjoyed seeing this side of turkish life. Seeing their culture is very important and exciting.

BOOKED FOR 2012

We booked our flights for 2012 on our return. Next year we are booked with Thomas Cook from Manchester.

We have previously used Aegean (for six years), but of course as we all know, they went into liquidation this summer. We were not sure how we would get home, as we were told nothing about our return flight. Our daughter tried her best dealing with Manchester from home, but to no avail. My husband spent approx. two days telephoning Istanbul to try and contact Onur airlines, but again to no avail. We are very lucky in the fact that we have a turkish family in Icmeler whom we regard as our own family, having known them for 18 years. They managed to help us and we eventually bought a new flight by Thomas Cook to return to Manchester three days later than planned. However, we were told eventually after our friend telephoned Dalaman that they would bring us home, but that we would have to go to Bodrum, and that they would only take us back to Birmingham. Unfortunately, this did not suit us as our car was parked in Manchester, but the sad part of it was that we were due to attend a very close friend's son's wedding in Chester on the Saturday, and all our wedding attire was in the boot of the car in Manchester. We had to sacrifice and miss the wedding, which was not very good, as it was a wedding that had been planned for nearly eighteen months. We will now have to wait for the official photos when they arrive.

We had also bought flights with Aegean for 2012, so we have filled in the claim forms to try and get this money back. This flight was bought with a credit card, so we should be ok.

ITEMS BOUGHT IN ICMELER

Beautiful platinum single diamond ring at Fast Fix. (I save my pocket money for two years and then buy something nice from his shop/workshop) (the workshopi is located just behind ICR office).

Two pairs of UGG slippers. Good value. 2 pairs for 60 lira. Already using them as there has been a drop in the temperature since we returned home to the cold hills of north wales.

The usual towels, fruit, honey etc from the market.

FLIGHT HOME/DALAMAN

Came home with Thomas Cook. No delay. Pleasant flight. Not much leg room. Felt that Duty Free in Dalaman was very expensive in comparison to Manchester (perfume especially).

JOURNEY FROM AIRPORT

Took us approx 1 hour and 45 minutes to return to North Wales.



Yet again a fantastic holiday. Icmeler never fails to deliver. Roll on July 2012.

Sorry for being long, but I was away for a month and so much to say ! ha ha ha


Helen