Day 13: Ölüdeniz and Fethiye

We don't have breakfast included at the hotel where we're staying in Dalyan, so our first task this morning was to find somewhere to eat. That did indeed end up being quite a challenge; we weren't up particularly early, but as we wandered around the streets at 9am we found that most places were still either closed or in the process of setting up.

It did at least give us another opportunity to admire the view of the ancient tombs in the morning sunshine.

Eventually we found a cafe that was advertising English breakfasts. Not necessarily what we would have chosen, but it had food and was open so that gave it an advantage over everywhere else we'd seen. I had scrambled egg on toast, while Tim had beans on toast plus a surprisingly large bacon & chip butty!

Not quite what we expected to be eating in Turkey, but the eggs were lovely and the bacon was surprisingly good too.

Once we'd eaten breakfast our aim for the day was to drive down the coast for an hour or so, towards a place called Ölüdeniz where there was supposed to be a cable car with really impressive views. The journey itself had very impressive views, as we made our way through a scenic wooded landscape, getting occasional glimpses of the coast. We arrived in Ölüdeniz around midday and successfully navigated our way to the carpark for the cable car station... only to find that it was closed   There was a sign saying something about technical maintenance. A man emerged from the carpark booth and said that it would be open again in an hour so we should come back then.

We decided to drive down into the centre of Ölüdeniz and have a walk by the sea while we waited. As we made our way downhill to the coast we had an amazing spectacle in front of us: there were dozens of people paragliding through the sky.

I'd read that the mountain above the town, Mount Babadağ, was popular with paragliders, but I hadn't expected there to be quite so many, or for some of them to be quite so low!

We had a stroll along the town's main beach.

The coastline was absolutely gorgeous here.

And the sea was a beautiful shade of blue.

Ölüdeniz is famous for its "Blue Lagoon",  a nature reserve with a sandy beach and incredible blue water. If you do a Google image search for "Ölüdeniz blue lagoon", you'll see what I mean. We spent about 15 minutes walking down a peninsula to see it... and were a bit underwhelmed!

The water just didn't look very blue! If anything, it looked less blue than the water of the sea around the corner.

Also it was quite a busy, popular beach so it was difficult to take many photos.

Perhaps the lagoon doesn't look blue when you're up close next to it, but does if you see it from the air? That might explain why so many people were paragliding!

We were still hoping to see it from the air if we managed to get up the cable car. An hour had definitely passed by this point so we jumped back in the car and drove back up the hill to the cable car parking. Unfortunately, when we arrived it was still closed. A man explained to us that the estimated completion of the maintenance work kept being extended - it was only supposed to have taken an hour in the morning, then it was extended to midday, then 1pm and now the new estimate was 3pm.

That didn't sound too promising, so we decided to give up on the cable car plan and drive to the nearby seaside town of Fethiye instead.

Fethiye is quite a big town with a population of 178,000, so it took us a while to navigate our way through it and find somewhere to park. Once we did, we were able to have a nice stroll around by the harbour.

There was a nice promenade, line with palm trees.

Regrettably I didn't get a photo of this, but there was also a really nice cycle path... which the local population were enthusiastically driving up and down on mopeds and scooters. There wasn't much cycling going on

We found a cafe to get a late lunch near to the harbour. There were loads of large yachts parked up there, including one with a Russian flag!

After lunch we had another stroll alongside the water.

It really was very picturesque here.

Then it was time to get back in the car and navigate our way out of the city and back towards Dalyan. It was a shame not to be able to go up the cable car, but we've had a fun day in Turkey nevertheless