March 2024

Hola! Hallo! Servus!

We are back!

After abandoning our little blog for one year we decided to pass by and share our recent adventure in Turkey.

About two months ago we decided it was time for vacation in a warmer place outside Europe, after months of cold weather, short days, and gray skies, our bodies needed vitamin D. Yannick did some research and he found a nice place to perfectly combine relaxation and interesting activities, and so we embarked our journey to Side, a cute old town (over 2700 years old) by the mediterranean ocean.

On March 16th we were at Munich airport about to check in when Leilani had the amazing idea of asking „Do I need a visa for Turkey? I think I don’t, but I am not sure“ and Yannick replied, „No you do not need one, I would never book a vacation in a place you cannot go, I googled it “. Well… next thing we know, the lady at the counter is asking for my Turkish visa, our faces went blank, it turned out Leilani needed a permit to travel to Turkey, not a visa, but she didn’t have it anyway, luckily, another Mexican lady was checking in for the same flight and she told us it was an online ETA that is ready in about 15 min.

We walked out of the line to do this online registration, but the website kept crashing after finishing the registration, we tried like 8 times, different devices, browsers, and VPN, but nothing worked, Leilani was mentally preparing herself to stay, let Yannick go to Turkey and take the next flight to Mexico hahaha yup. But right when she was about to quit, Yannick asked her to try one more time… It worked! On the last try it worked! After a chaotic start, we were able to check in, pass passport control, and head to the waiting room, where our second challenge was waiting.

Yannick, had the brilliant idea of bringing a light stand, yes a freaking light stand, (you can tell Leilani is writing this) the light stand exceeded the allowed measures and on top of that, he forgot the umbrella for the light stand to have a purpose and utility. Can you guess who had to hide the light under the coat looking like it had a back hump because that thing was huge? Yes, you guessed right. Anyway, we managed to pass it without getting caught and enjoyed our flight to Antalya.

After the flight, we rode a bus for 1 hour to our hotel, we arrived at midnight so we went straight to bed. The next day we explored the city, bought some basics, and had some food, to our surprise the prices in general, were not cheaper than in Germany, and everything was listed in Euros, not Liras, we bought Liras in the airport because our common sense told us to pay with Liras in Turkey, never imagined everything was in Euros and when they were doing the conversion to Liras we were losing money.

Our general feeling is that Turkish people are very friendly, and they were extra friendly when they knew Leilani was from Mexico, a part of her felt like being at home, with good food, good weather, friendly people, and developing country infrastructure, ah! home vibes.

The funny thing is some people thought we were Turkish, and when we asked why, the answer was „Because you are not blonde and don’t have blue eyes“ Haha makes sense. But by far the most random story we heard was from a super friendly store clerk who was chatting with us, he asked where we were from, we answered accordingly and he told Leilani she looked mixed, between Spanish and indigenous, which is correct, the interesting part was when he said „That is why you look Turkish, because the Ottomans arrived to America before Cristopher Columbus and they mixed with the natives“ so Leilani is basically Turkish. The same guy also asked us to bring him whiskey in our next trip to Side, we will remember you Bekir from the 82 store , but we probably won’t come back, sorry.

Our highlight of the Trip was the food, one day when strolling around the city looking for a place to eat, the owner of a restaurant recommended another restaurant around the corner with vegetarian options. Oh god, was it the best part of our trip, the variety, the seasoning, everything was delicious, we went back every day of our stay in Side to eat in the same place. And after a delicious meal, they serve you a warm cup of Turkish tea, which is common in all the restaurants. It is relaxing and sits well in the stomach.

The interesting part about the restaurant is that it is run by women, we know that this is very common in our countries but not in Islamic countries, where men are the main workforce and women stay at home to take care of the housed duties, on a normal day we saw mostly men, in the street, in the stores, in the restaurants, running business, specially in the small town where we stayed, in the big cities the narrative is a bit different, But anyway these type of woman’s restaurants that offer traditional homemade food are not as common as the others selling kebap, döner, pide and other types of Turkish street food.

Our first time in Kumru (the restaurant) we made fools of ourselves, obviously, we don’t speak Turkish, and the ladies working there only speak Turkish, we saw a food showcase and by the signs and the way they tried to explained, we understood we would get a spoonful of every dish we point at all together in one plate, well… it turned out we got one plate of every dish we pointed at hahaha we were just laughing when we realized they kept bringing plates to the table. But it was nothing to worry about because we asked half of the food to go and we had it for dinner 🙂

On Wednesday, we booked a tour that took us to different places in Manavgat, we saw ruins, a mosque, waterfalls, a dam, and we did a boat tour. The ruins were okay, we believed they could take better care of them for historical reasons, the Mosque was beautiful, the waterfalls were very small but pretty and the boat trip was haha 1 hour driving in a lake going in circles around 2 little island, it was not the most fun part for us but it came in the package.

The next day we had a spa day, very relaxing, first we were in the sauna for about 15 min, and after a good sweat we moved to the steam room, Yannick stood strong, but Leilani could not go further from the door, 2 min. max and she was out. Afterwards, a lady and a man took us to another room for the Turkish bath, don’t worry, we were wearing swimsuits, we were separated, the man bathed Yannick, and the woman bathed Leilani. This consisted of laying down in a stone bed, while the person bathing you takes water in a gourd and pours it all over your body, they proceed to rub your skin with some sort of scratchy glove to exfoliate the dead skin, later they let a big load of soap foam fall over you, like a big cloud, it is very relaxing, they pour water once again and they take you outside to rest in a bed for 10 min. Once the break was over, they took us to the massage room where we spent 60 min. We can recommend the experience.

Side in itself was very small but pretty, we liked walking around the port checking some stores and taking pictures of the sunsets, on average the temperature was 18 degrees, not warm enough to swim in the ocean but at least it was sunny, that already helps the mood. In general, we enjoyed our vacation a lot, more than the location, we enjoyed being disconnected from our routine at home, spending time together, exploring, petting stray cats, making memories together and having delicious food.

Thank you for reading us 🙂

Love,

Leilani and Yannick